Oratorian celebrations of Easter

The Internet provides some image sof how the othe English Oratories celebrated Easter. The New Liturgical Movement has an account at the  following link with a splendid set of pictures The Easter Vigil at the London Oratory

There is a picture of the High Mass at Birmingham which can be accessed at http://www.birminghamoratory.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/IMG_1187-smaller-275x205.jpg

At York the celebrations appear to have been impressive. I have adapted and edited the post from the website of St Wilfrid's as follows:

The Sanctuary at the beginning of Holy Week 

Maundy Thursday and the Altar of Repose:

 

The Altar of Repose this year is particularly beautiful. The Poor Clares  gave us a beautiful altar frontal from their former monastery in Lawrence Street together with some of the other hangings pictured. The tabernacle veil and the altar linen are from the Bar Convent. We are very grateful to the Sisters for their generosity.

At the Maundy Thursday Mass our choir was joined by members of the St Austin's Singers from Wakefield who sang a polyphonic setting of the Mass by Casciolini.

After Mass a group walked in prayer down Petergate and Walmgate to visit the Altar of Repose at St George's Church.

Many people stayed in church until the end of the period of watching and joined the community in the Office of Compline.

 

 

The Paschal Candle decorated by the Oratory's guest Mr Eamon Manning

 

Lighting the Candle from the Paschal Fire

 

Blessing the Font

 

 

Receiving four candidates into full communion with the Church and administering the Sacrament of Confirmation.

  

St Wilfrid's decorated for Easter

 

Images: Patrick Thornber/St Wilfrid's York website

All of which suggests things are going very well in the new foundation in York.

A happy, blessed and joyful Easter to all the English Oratories

Some topical anniversary posts from around the Blogosphere

Here are some posts from other blogs which may interest readers - I would commend each of them in their own right to others.

First there are some fine pictures from the New Liturgical Movement of the Solemn Pontifical Mass at the London Oratory last night. The celebrant was Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster. They can be seen at Pontifical Mass for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception at the London Oratory

New Catholic at Rorate Caeli has a piece by Bishop Ullathorne, first Catholic Bishop of Birmingham, in the post On the 160th Anniversary of the Dogmatic Definition of the Immaculate Conception by Pope Pius IX

Peter Kwasniewski at Rorate Caeli has a post with links to the relevant texts of both the Papal encyclical Quanta Cura and the Syllabus itself in The 150th Anniversary of Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors. Reading the texts makes one realise how little has changed in terms of the issues, however much we may think the circumstances have changed.

Finally The Mad Monarchist has a post about the Greek political and constitutional catastrophe of forty years ago with the referendum on the monarchy there. It can be read at Anniversary of a Greek Tragedy

Bishop Byrne at the London Oratory

The New Liturgical Movement has a report about the Solemn Mass for St Philip Neri's day celebrated in advance for St Philip's School by Bishop Byrne at the London Oratory earler today. The illustrated account can be seen at Pontifical High Mass of St Philip celebrated by Bishop Robert Byrne at the London Oratory.

The Rosary Crusade in London

I took time off from the Forty Hours at the Oxford Oratory to go up to London to participate in the Rosary Crusade this afternoon. I thought we were going to be in for rain as there was sharp shower just before the coach stopped but in fact the afternoon proved dry and sunny at times. I was anxious to go this year, having been unable to do so last year, to remember Fr Hugh Thwaites S.J., the founder of the Crusade who died at the age of 95 in the late summer. As it was also the 95th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun on this day in 1917 there was an additional cause for commemoration.

I had just arrived in Ambrosden Avenue beside Westminster Cathedral when I was greeted by a friend who is a seminarian at Allen Hall, and we kept company throughout the procession to Brompton. The numbers participating were again impressive, and we seemed as a procession to keep together in recitation of the Mysteries than on some previous occasions. At the appropriate points as we sang the Aves in various hymns most of us waved our hymn sheets in the approved Fatima fashion.

As usual on this occasion I was struck by the friendliness of Saturday afternoon shoppers as we passed by - when we are so often told there is such hostility to religion, here was renewed evidence of tolerance and, indeed, benevolence towards what we were doing.

At the Oratory itself those who had processed from Westminster and others who had awaited our arrival filled the church - as usual on these occasions I ended up standing in a side chapel. We had a forceful sermon from the Provost of the London Oratory, Fr Julian Large C.O., on the way in which Marian dogmas and devotion counteract heresy, and applying it to the observance of the Year of Faith. More so than in the past the devotions, including the Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, spoke to me as an individual, making me all the more pleased to have made the effort to go. Benediction at the High Altar and the Salve Regina at the Lady Altar closed the devotions. A good way to spend the afternoon - next year's Crusade is scheduled for Saturday October 12th.

Afterwards I met up with two sisters, friends from their student days in Oxford, and their parents. We exchanged news and information about mutual friends before I set off back up Brompton Road and Park Lane to Marble Arch and the coach back to Oxford.

St Wilfrid and Fr Faber

Having written my posts St Wilfrid two years ago about his life and cult and last year about two of the churches under his patronage I was wondering what to say about him today when, searching for images of him on the internet I came across this one, of a statue in the church at Cotton in Staffordshire. It is not in itself a great work of art, but it is an interesting link between St Wilfrid and one of the great figures of the English nineteenth century Church, Fr F.W. Faber.

Statue of St Wilfrid
St Wilfrid's Catholic church, Cotton, Staffordshire

Image: Mr Po on Flickr

Fr Faber, the Oxford DNB life of whom by Sheridan Gilley can be read here, was born at Calverley in the West Riding  in 1814, although he only spent the first six months of his life in the village, about which there is an online article here. His grandfather, Thomas Faber, was the Vicar and Frederick William was born at the vicarage. The medieval church at Calverley, in which he was baptised is dedicated to St Wilfrid, and in later life Faber was to exhibit considerable devotion to the seventh and eighth century Bishop whose Roman preferences shaped the evolution of the Northumbrian church. Devotion to English saints was, of course, a hallmark of the Oxford Movement.

Thus upon his reception it was under the patronage of St Wilfrid that Fr Faber made his initial foundation at Cotton, known as the Wilfidians, built a church under St Wilfrid's patronage, and was to take the name Wilfrid in religion.

In later years at London the Oratory came to have a chapel of St Wilfrid, where Faber's remains now lie, and St Wilfrid's Hall.

 

St Wilfrid's Calverley

Image: Wikimedia commons

St Wilfrid's Calverley may then be seen, in a sense, to be a somewhat surprising mother church to the London Oratory.

Pictures of Fr Hunwicke's Ordination and first EF Mass

Following on from my post yesterday about Fr Hunwicke's Ordination the New Liturgical Movement has two posts with photographs of , firstly, The Priestly Ordination of Fr. John Hunwicke and also from yesterday Fr. Hunwicke's EF Mass at the London Oratory .

Fr Tim Finigan's account of the Ordination, together with his reflections upon it, and also with photographs can be read at Laying hands on Fr Hunwicke.

Ordination at the London Oratory

There is a fine set of pictures on the New Liturgical Movement website of the ordination to the priesthood of Fr Edward van den Bergh C.O. at the London Oratory by the Archbishop of Westminster on October 22nd. They can be viewed at An Ordination at the London Oratory. Here is a sample:

I have met Fr Edward and know his parents, who live in Oxford, and his brother, who was one of the Archiepiscopal vimperers.

It was also good to see on the photographs my fellow Orielensis, Br Stephen Morrison, now a Norbertine in Chelmsford, who was Sub-Deacon. There were other friends and familiar faces amongst the clergy and the Brothers of the London Oratory who were assisting.

Fr Blake has some reflections on the liturgy in his post An Authentic Celebration According to the Roman Missal.

St Wilfrid

The other week I posted some comments about St Wilfrid in connection with the proposed Society of St Wilfrid and St Hilda, and as to day is his Feast it seems suitable to say something more.

Apropos the Society of St Wilfrid and St Hilda, which certainly in the case of Wilfrid is most inappropriately named, I would point to Fr Hunwicke's comments which can be found here here; I agree with his choice of the word daft.

It is worth reflecting upon Fr Faber's choice of the patronage and, indeed, name of Wilfrid. Frederick William Faber took Wilfrid as his patron for his foundation at Cotton in Staffordshire and then at the Londoon Oratory, where there is both St Wilfrid's chapel - where the remains of Faber are now buried - and St Wilfrid's Hall. Faber himself chose the name Wilfrid as his name in religion. This was, I assume, not merely a tribute to a great Anglo-Saxon saint with a strong sene of the importance of the Roman obedience. but also a personal reminiscence of the historic parish church dedicated to St Wilfrid in Faber's birthplace, Calverley in the West Riding.

Image from St Wilfrid's Catholic Primary School, Ripon

St Wilfrid's medieval cult was extensive, and centred on Ripon, where some of these traditions have been revived during the twentieth century. At both Ripon and Hexham the crypts of the churches he built still survive. This site from Ripon has a series of articles about Wilfrid and his abbey church there and its archaeology and can be viewed here.

A view of the present Ripon Minster before the fall of the spire on the central tower in 1660 and the subsequent removal of those on the western towers - a reminder of what has been lost even from those churches which emerged still roofed from the disasters of the sixteenth century.

His relics appear to have been removed later in the Anglo-Saxon period to Canterbury, although this was disputed by the church at Ripon and York. If they were moved it is tribute to the perception of his status as a national figure.

Seen as a great patron of the see of York the arms ascribed to him - three suns (not stars as in the icon above) - are prominent in the medieval decoration of York Minster, although there his cult perhaps declined with the rise of that of St William in the twelfth century and devotion to Archbishop Scrope in the fifteenth century. Many churches were dedicated to him, a tradition which has been revived in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, notably in Yorkshire and Sussex. These include the spectacular Temple Moore designed church in Harrogate - the town's only Grade I building.

The Anglican church of St Wilfrid Bognor Regis has a very good site about pilgrimages parishioners made to places associated with their patron and other very useful information about him here.

To mark the feast I borrowed Bertram Colgrave's edition of Eddius Stephanus The Life of Bishop Wilfrid (Cambridge UP) from the Oxford Union Library. I recommended the book recently as a valuable source, and must admit that, apart from extracts, I had not read the text through before, though I have meant to for many years.

Eddius' text raises not a few textual questions which are discussed by Colgrave, but it is full of interest and unstinting admiration for its hero. Wilfrid emerges as a major figure by any standards - a courageous and holy bishop and missionary, a loyal son of the Roman church, and a significant political figure not only in England (if that term can be used for his era) but also on his travels to and through the Frankish kingdoms. He inspired love and respect as well as fear and antipathy from his contemporaries.

Wilfrid was a man of prayer and profound faith. His conception of the proper dignity of a bishop and of unswerving fidelity to Rome helped reinforce and develop the strong Anglo-Saxon link to the Holy See that floewd from St Augustine's mission. In his clashes with rulers of Northumbria, and indeed with Frankish rulers he anticipates the Church-State conflicts of later centuries.

Given his achievements it is perhaps sad that he is not better known nationally and venerated as a figure in the life of the Church in England.

Chichester Cathedral - photograph from St Wilfrid's Bognor Regis.

The fishing net recalls Bede's story of how Wilfrid taught the people of Sussex to fish with nets during a famine.
I think this modern image captures something of Wilfrid'determination and resolve and suggests his noble birth.

London Oratory Mass of Thanksgiving

Yesterday, having seen on New Liturgical Movement the following photographs of the London Oratory, I decided, more or less on the spur of the moment, to go to their Mass of Thanksgiving for the Beatification of John Henry Newman.





Similar festal hangings are also to be found beside the outdoor statue of Cardinal Newman which can be seen beside the Oratory church. Moving inside, you can not only see some of the red hangings which are to be found inside the church, do also take note of the image of Newman (and that of St. Philip Neri) to be found to either side of the High Altar.





However I was bit late getting away from Oxford and had to sit in a very long traffic jam north of White City. I disembarked at Notting Hill and eventually found a taxi - the necessary extravagance I decided upon if I was ever to get to the Oratory before Mass ended. The taxi driver was 'interested in the etymology of the word `oratory' - he had once been inside Brompton and thought it very fine. Before we had reached the Natural History Museum we were on to the Knights Templars and The Holy Blood and thh Holy Grail... Happily we arrived at the Oratory before we got too far down that route, though I assured him that stuff was, as it is, all nonsense.

I got into the Oratory at the words of institution, but at least I was there. I was able to see the procession of the clergy leading the Archbishop of Westminster, carrying a primary relic of John Henry Newman, to the new Newman altar and chapel. Following the litany of St Philip this was blessed by the Archbishop.

As well as the primary relic placed on the altar a number of secondary relics were on display. These included a mitre given by the Cardinal to the London Oratory and the missal used by Bl. Dominic Barberi when he celebrated the Mass at which Newman communicated for the first time as a Catholic on October 10th 1845 at Littlemore.

Afterwards there was time to meet up with old friends and admire the new chapel and the hangings put up to mark the occasion.

I was delighted to see that St Peter, whose statue - a copy of the famous one in the Vatican basilica - is immediately in front of the Newman chapel, was wearing not only a white cope, but also a triple tiara. I knew this piece of Papal insignia was on order for the Oratory, but had not seen it in place before. Clearly the London Oratory has everything.

Newman chapels

The New Liturgical Movement recently published an excellent, illustrated article by Fr Symondson about the proposed chapels in honour of Cardinal Newman at the three Oratory churches of Birmingham, London and Oxford. You can read it here. There are a series of comments also worth reading. I look forward to being able to see, and pray at, all three.

CIEL at the London Oratory

I more or less managed to fulfill my plan to combine celebrating Oakapple Day, the 350th anniversary of the Restoration, with attending the CIEL Conference last Saturday at the London Oratory.

I say more or less because, partly through my own fault, and partly the slowness of getting out of Oxford on the coach on a bank holiday Saturday I was too late to attend the Mass at the Oratory. This was particularly disappointing as it was a celebration of the Ember Saturday liturgy - there is some background here - with all five readings before the Epistle and Gospel, which I had not attended on any previous occasion.

 
However I did manage to meet up with a number of old friends and catch up on news, before making my way in the way one does to the "Bunch of Grapes" and a pub lunch, washed down with an appropriately named pint of "Royal London" to celebrate the Restoration.

Back at the Oratory there was time to visit several of the altars and spend some time in this splendid building before the afternoon conference. There were two speakers in St Wilfrid's Hall. The first was the distinguished composer James Macmillan. He spoke about his own approach to composing ecclesiastical music, and the factors which influenced him. This, I think, could be summarised as a liturgically and spiritually holistic approach, and he cited the writings of the then Cardinal Ratzinger as being central to what he saw as the direction liturgical music should take. He also drew attention to the way in which much of the public discussion of these matters was ill-informed and failed to engage with the actual issues.

The second speaker was Fr Richard Duffield,  Provost of the Birmingham Oratory and Actor for Newman's cause. He spoke about the history of the Cardinal's cause, and why it has taken so long to lead to the impending beatification. He also about some of the planning that was going into the Mass at Coventry on September 19th, and how that was evolving through discussion with the various groups involved in its organisation.

The afternoon closed with Benediction in the Little Oratory and a reception in St Wilfrid's Hall - again a chance to catch up wih friends. The CIEL Conference is always a good occasion and I would urge anyone interested to go to these occasions in the future.

I then went off on the tube to meet another very good friend, rounding off the day with supper in a Lebanese restaurant near Baker Street. This turned out to be a couple of doors away from a public house called "Pontefract Castle" - one of two in London. This seemed very appropriate on Oakapple Day given the loyal defence of the real castle in my home town in 1649 on behalf of both King Charles I and King Charles II.

CIEL Conference May 29th

I see from Fr Blake's blog that this year's annual CIEL one-day Conference is on Saturday, 29 May at the London Oratory. The cost is £5.

There will be an EF High Mass in the morning at 11 am, celebrated by the Actor [Postulastor] for the cause of John Henry Newman, Fr Richard Duffield Cong. Orat., formerly of the Oxford Oratory and new Provost of the Birmingham Oratory, who will also speak at the Conference.

James Macmillan, who has often spoken and written about the need for an appropriate liturgical and musical renewal of the Church's tradition, will be speaking on Liturgical Music pre- and post-Vatican II at 2.30pm in St Wilfrid's Hall.

I hope I shall be able to attend. It seems a good way to celebrate Oak Apple Day - which will be the 350th anniversary of the Restoration I realise - definitely a good day to be in London.