They used to employ incense from Brookwood at Our Cathedral some years ago - incense being offered at the main Eucharist on High Days and Holy Days - with a very skilful retired army officer wielding a mean thurible (360 degrees and all).
Not sure if they still use the same incense, but to me it had a rather peculiar - almost medicinal - odour. Not unpleasing, but not at all like the usual Prinknash or whatever!
They used to employ incense from Brookwood at Our Cathedral some years ago - incense being offered at the main Eucharist on High Days and Holy Days - with a very skilful retired army officer wielding a mean thurible (360 degrees and all).
Not sure if they still use the same incense, but to me it had a rather peculiar - almost medicinal - odour. Not unpleasing, but not at all like the usual Prinknash or whatever!
I saw the 360 degree whirling at a church at Honfleur in Normandy. The back of the building filled up with tourists for the procession at the end, all wielding cameras. The spectacle must have been in a guide book or something. I thought it was odd because incense isn't used after the Eucharistic Prayer, and I've never seen it used at the end before or since.
Yes, the thurible is put away in the Sacristy at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer at Our Place (which I assume is indeed the usual practice), and Madam Sacristan marches out empty-handed, after the Angelus...
However, there are YouTube videos of High Mass at Nassau Anglican Cathedral, Bahamas, where the skilful young thurifer does his stuff during the final hymn, as well as during the Introit. https://youtube.com/watch?v=xeRHUD3yYjA&t=251s
My sons both swung the thurible in their serving years and were adept at the 360-degree rotation. They used to give it two or three 360s on the path up the side of the church to get the coals glowing properly before the Introit. My younger son was swinging the thurible at midnight Mass one year when we were confronted as we processed out at the west door by a rather scrawny streaker. He resisted the temptation to apply the instrument to the fellow's nethers.
My sons both swung the thurible in their serving years and were adept at the 360-degree rotation. They used to give it two or three 360s on the path up the side of the church to get the coals glowing properly before the Introit. My younger son was swinging the thurible at midnight Mass one year when we were confronted as we processed out at the west door by a rather scrawny streaker. He resisted the temptation to apply the instrument to the fellow's nethers.
You don't always have to resist temptation.
15 or more years ago, St Sanity had a couple of Canadian students in the congregation. The young fellow could swing the thurible pretty well, but the woman was quite something else again - the full 360 degrees in each direction and then crossed over, forwards and backwards. Alas, our new rector did away with incense, a detraction from our worship.
Mr Dragon used to do 360s when he was serving pre-Covid. Only for the recessional on major feasts though. It was noticeable that the rest of the servers would hang back a little as they came into the nave aisle, so there was enough room.
Hmm. Another church where incense is swung during the recessional - but that may be purely for practical reasons, if the sacristy/vestry is at the opposite end of the church to the chancel.
At Our Place, the sacristy is immediately next to the chancel, so it's easy for the thurifer to put the thurible away after the Eucharistic Prayer. That means the charcoal is out, and the bowl is cooling down, by the time Madam Sacristan gets to tidy everything up!
They used to employ incense from Brookwood at Our Cathedral some years ago - incense being offered at the main Eucharist on High Days and Holy Days - with a very skilful retired army officer wielding a mean thurible (360 degrees and all).
Not sure if they still use the same incense, but to me it had a rather peculiar - almost medicinal - odour. Not unpleasing, but not at all like the usual Prinknash or whatever!
I saw the 360 degree whirling at a church at Honfleur in Normandy. The back of the building filled up with tourists for the procession at the end, all wielding cameras. The spectacle must have been in a guide book or something. I thought it was odd because incense isn't used after the Eucharistic Prayer, and I've never seen it used at the end before or since.
Should destiny every take shipmates to the Cathedral at Santiago de Composteal, the huge thurible (El Botafumeiro) is used at the very end of mass, possibly after the blessing (I can't recall). For the curious... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_s2Rf0Z0eE
Unlike Your Place, Bishop's Finger, we do cense the statue of the BVM for the Angelus at the end of Sunday Mass. Normally the thurifer then just carries it back to the sacristy in the brief procession across from south to north aisle. A recessional hymn only comes out for Christmas, Easter and the like... and visiting bishops.
Unlike Your Place, Bishop's Finger, we do cense the statue of the BVM for the Angelus at the end of Sunday Mass. Normally the thurifer then just carries it back to the sacristy in the brief procession across from south to north aisle. A recessional hymn only comes out for Christmas, Easter and the like... and visiting bishops.
Yes, I see.
Come to think of it, I wonder why Our Place doesn't cense the BVM after Mass? She's in the north aisle, next to the Lady Chapel, and the sacristy is on the south side, so it would be a similar manoeuvre...
Our final hymn is sung after the blessing, and FInC makes his way to Our Lady during the last verse thereof.
I've been in quarantine for Holy Week (first time in more than 50 years I haven't attended HW services). I'm told attendance at the Vigil & Lighting of the New Fire was about 50 plus 16 choir.
We're not long back from the main service, where there were about 130 or so in the congregation. Add a half dozen for the sanctuary and 20 or so in the choir. There'd already been a 5.30 service, which starts outside with the lighting of the fire and finishes in the Hall with breakfast.
I wonder whether any other Anglican churches in Sinny (apart from St James’ King St) do a dawn service. I have not been back to CCSL ( Anglo-Catholic) in some years and the vigil with lighting of fire was at midnight.
I just tried quick check for St John's, Gordon, but there's no reference to one (or indeed to any special Easter Day service). Much the same for Enmore, Balmain, Concord, Dee Why, North Parramatta and Strathfield. St Paul's at Burwood has Choral Eucharist & Blessing of the New Fire at 9.30 pm on Easter Eve. I have a vague memory, not shared by Madame, that in years well past there used be one at St James Turramurra. St Paul's Kogarah is now directed to the Chinese community now living in that suburb, and by all accounts is doing well at that.
OK, what are people's attendance figures like over Holy Week and Easter Sunday this year?
So far, Holy Week services are at about 2/3 of pre-Covid norms. A typical Sunday is about half pre-Covid norms at the moment, which isn't a surprise: the people that come to Holy Week services tend to be the more dedicated ones.
We'll see about the big Sunday service - pre-Covid, we'd get a lot of people.
All our numbers are about 2/3 pre-Covid. Holy Week has been no different.
Much the same at Our Place, although earlier this year the Sunday attendance began to pick up a bit, to pre-Covid levels.
Holy Week numbers have also been a bit lower, but I haven't yet been informed by my Spy as to the attendance at the Easter Vigil (8pm yesterday) or the 1030am Mass today.
I think we - and probably many other Places - are being affected by what I refer to as the CAW factor.
This is a combination of Covid, Away (the first opportunity for an Easter holiday for quite some time), and Work. Quite a few of our people are care workers, nurses, or similar, and, of course, can't always arrange shifts so as to avoid Sunday mornings!
OK, what are people's attendance figures like over Holy Week and Easter Sunday this year?
We had 15 adults and 4 children this morning, slightly lower than a normal post lockdown Sunday, but not bad for Easter. For some reason Easter tends to be one of the worst attended Sundays in the year.
OK so I think I can assume our attendance pattern was localised and I have not switched to another reality nor the second coming is happening. St Obscures started as above expected or hoped for on Maundy Thursday (a bit below Sunday attendance if you add both Sunday masses together) and went up from there.
I've just heard from my Spy that we had 55 adults and 11 under-16s in church today which is roughly double our Sunday attendance on a Good Day! Three of the adults are teenagers, BTW, all confirmed in recent years.
It's not impossible that at least some of the adults were people visiting friends and/or relatives in Our Parish - we had a Christmas Day Mass one year with at least 30 *strangers* in addition to our own regulars !
The Vigil, never an especially well-attended service, had 10 - IIRC, it was about a dozen last year. For many years, we didn't have a Vigil, but FatherInCharge started it up again at the first opportunity he had, which was Easter 2021.
I have no idea what this morning's mass numbers are. Oh and we saw CAW in the number of servers available as Maundy Thursday and Vigil Mass ran on skeleton teams
We had about 36 at the family communion this morning, the middle service of three in the group. The first was a dawn service, the third was HC in another, so that is three of the five churches covered today.
The norm has been 24 or fewer in recent weeks, thanks to CAW.
At my place about half were folk that I had not seen before ( though I have only been attending for three years), people of all ages, including three under five: possibly some were visiting families, but it was good to see them, even one couple accompanied by two well behaved dogs.
In my local town, Holy Week services have been ecumenical, supported equally by Anglicans and Methodists and the odd Roman Catholic( Though there is no RC church here ).
We've been operating since the start of the pandemic with the minimum of servers - just Madam Sacristan (wielding the thurible) on most Sundays. We do have a couple of willing and well-trained lads who help out when they can, but the family has no car, and now lives out of the parish, so they tend to turn up only on major Festivals and Holy Days.
One odd side-effect of the paucity of servers is that FatherInCharge insists on carrying in the processional cross himself. This looks very peculiar (IMHO), and is also dangerous, as the cross in question is very dilapidated and urgently needs repairing...
We had ~25 this morning, including two children, which is the highest we've had in months. Some visitors, some regular visitors, and a few folk who are irregular attenders, possibly attracted by having a 3-dimensional worship leader this morning rather than our usual video link.
Hehe - FatherInCharge handed out duly blessed chocolate mini-eggs to all and sundry after Mass...(I hope he had enough).
One or two large-ish families were Away, so even with the good attendance we had, there could well have been at least a dozen more. I think that, despite the CAW factor, a lot of people had made certain that they would be in church today, even if they had to miss out Palm Sunday and the rest of Holy Week!
We've been back to normal numbers wise for a while. I didn't make it to any of the extra services, partly because of Dragonlet bedtimes, but we were definitely augmented this morning by lots of visitors for a baptism.
It's probably as well we didn't have a baptism this morning, or the service might have gone on rather longer than it did...
Incidentally, the two Places I went to online today (one in a certain Scottish city, and the other in Amsterdam) both had quite sizeable congregations. Excellent sermons, fine organ music, and rousing hymns from both Places, but a tad less ceremonial from Amsterdam...though the latter did bring in the (already lit) Paschal Candle before the first hymn, and the pastor wore a smart alb and white stole.
@Pendragon makes an interesting point about bedtimes. All Our Place's Holy Week services (with the exception of the Good Friday Liturgy at 12 noon) were in the evenings at various times - 7pm, 730pm, and 8pm.
This makes it hard for young families to attend any services other than those on Palm Sunday and Easter Day, although I know of one or two Places that have some sort of family/children's *workshop/activities* on Good Friday. Maybe we could have a look a doing something similar next year, possibly at the same time as the Liturgy. Maundy Thursday ISTM is very much a service for the committed adults, but YMMV.
@Bishops Finger I think a family Stations of the Cross on Good Friday would be workable - it would be active and not just a normal service, but still liturgically appropriate. Maybe hot cross buns afterwards? I also wonder, given the usual church cleaning that happens on the Saturday of Holy Week, if that day could be used for something - if you have a churchyard or green space adjoining the church, maybe a wildlife survey or planting a Mary Garden? If it's outside it wouldn't interfere with the cleaning inside, but it would have the manpower to be supervised and have refreshments etc provided. The RSPB, Woodland Trust etc usually have some kind of scheme going on at this time of year.
Relatedly, I have wondered if your church would benefit from a youth worker, even just part-time - seems like there is lots of potential there. I don't know if that's the kind of thing the diocese could possibly help you fund.
@Pomona - yes, a GF *Family Stations* (with HCBs to follow, as the Liturgy congregation has them, too!) might well work, and I think I'll suggest it for next year.
As to a youth worker, yes, I'd like to see one in post, but the funding might be a bit problematic. Still worth exploring, though, perhaps in conjunction with our next-door parish.
As to green space etc., yes, we do have some *grounds*, but they're rather small in area. Again, though, a possibility.
Thanks for the ideas - my poor diminished brain was at a bit of a loss!
My local church organised a children's treasure hunt in the churchyard, with Easter eggs of course. This was thanks to the Children's worker who is excellent at organising such things, though less good at standing up in church and saying anything. In fact it was the only bit of publicity to appear on their F-c-b--k page this year.
#1 Son decided to go to church this morning 😯
He was so amazed at the numbers he took a squint in the register after the service and attendance was 134 over 16s, 41 under 16s, 99 communicants. Total population of village c1200.
He said the choir were OK but the hymns were a bit slow, someone* decided to change the list 😡 to include Thine be the glory, and the whole rounded-off with a rendition of Wesley's Choral Song he described as "mangled, good job they didn't attempt the fugue" 🤣😂🤣😂
We've been operating since the start of the pandemic with the minimum of servers - just Madam Sacristan (wielding the thurible) on most Sundays. We do have a couple of willing and well-trained lads who help out when they can, but the family has no car, and now lives out of the parish, so they tend to turn up only on major Festivals and Holy Days.
One odd side-effect of the paucity of servers is that FatherInCharge insists on carrying in the processional cross himself. This looks very peculiar (IMHO), and is also dangerous, as the cross in question is very dilapidated and urgently needs repairing...
I don't understand this (Anglican?) obsession with the processional cross. It's a nice to have, especially for grand occasions with plenty of personnel. But if there is no 'procession' as such, only the priest and a couple of others, it makes no sense.
Good Friday was strange in a different way; at the church I attended for an otherwise beautifully executed liturgy the processional cross (veiled!) led both the entry and final processions. To my mind the only cross that should have been carried was the one for Veneration. Clashing of symbols.
We've been operating since the start of the pandemic with the minimum of servers - just Madam Sacristan (wielding the thurible) on most Sundays. We do have a couple of willing and well-trained lads who help out when they can, but the family has no car, and now lives out of the parish, so they tend to turn up only on major Festivals and Holy Days.
One odd side-effect of the paucity of servers is that FatherInCharge insists on carrying in the processional cross himself. This looks very peculiar (IMHO), and is also dangerous, as the cross in question is very dilapidated and urgently needs repairing...
I don't understand this (Anglican?) obsession with the processional cross. It's a nice to have, especially for grand occasions with plenty of personnel. But if there is no 'procession' as such, only the priest and a couple of others, it makes no sense.
Good Friday was strange in a different way; at the church I attended for an otherwise beautifully executed liturgy the processional cross (veiled!) led both the entry and final processions. To my mind the only cross that should have been carried was the one for Veneration. Clashing of symbols.
Yes, we have very rarely used the processional cross in recent years, and it would be better left in the vestry until such time as it can be repaired. FInC has the peculiar habit of wrapping a piece of ribbon around it, in the correct liturgical colour, of course...
I agree that using a processional cross at Good Friday is indeed a clash of symbols, and quite superfluous - I'm happy to report that ours was not used on GF, but the large wooden crucifix that usually hangs in the sacristy came into its own. Not for carrying in and out, but just for the Veneration, after which it was placed on the otherwise bare High Altar
OK, what are people's attendance figures like over Holy Week and Easter Sunday this year?
Holy Week services for us were at perhaps 2/3 of pre-Covid attendance, which is pretty consistent with typical Sundays the last few months. This morning was probably 50% over our typical Sunday the last few months, and I think maybe 75% of a typical pre-Covid Easter.
@Bishops Finger maybe something like sowing some wildflower seeds - cornfield annual mixes are bright and cheery, and will happily self seed with just an occasional mowing in autumn - and putting up a simple shrine. Or, perhaps sweet cicely aka Myrrhis odorata to honour the Myrrhbearing women at the tomb. It would also self-seed, and I like the idea of being able to gather some on subsequent Holy Saturdays for use in Easter flowers. I wonder if anywhere does an outdoor-friendly icon of the Myrrhbearers.
Nice idea @Pomona, but with what you’ve suggested you’d need to move Easter to later in the year. None of them are likely to be in flower even on a late Holy Saturday (unless or until climate change catches up with us).
Nice idea @Pomona, but with what you’ve suggested you’d need to move Easter to later in the year. None of them are likely to be in flower even on a late Holy Saturday (unless or until climate change catches up with us).
Oh duh, of course not. Still, planting them would still be appropriate imo.
@Pomona - yes, we did sow some wildflower seeds a couple of years ago, and they've done quite well in a grassy patch next to our Hall. The people who maintain the grass carefully mow around them! I shall be interested to see how far they've spread, this year.
We could sow more, but much of the narrow strip of land next to the church is north-facing, and right up against the church wall.
@Pomona - yes, we did sow some wildflower seeds a couple of years ago, and they've done quite well in a grassy patch next to our Hall. The people who maintain the grass carefully mow around them! I shall be interested to see how far they've spread, this year.
We could sow more, but much of the narrow strip of land next to the church is north-facing, and right up against the church wall.
Sweet/true wild violets like shade so would work there - 'Our Lady's Modesty', though, is maybe not my *favourite* Marian flower title....but would certainly fit the perfumed flower option.
I have no idea what this morning's mass numbers are. Oh and we saw CAW in the number of servers available as Maundy Thursday and Vigil Mass ran on skeleton teams
We had 130 communicants on Easter day itself. These figures are higher than any Easter in the last forty years.
I have no idea what this morning's mass numbers are. Oh and we saw CAW in the number of servers available as Maundy Thursday and Vigil Mass ran on skeleton teams
We had 130 communicants on Easter day itself. These figures are higher than any Easter in the last forty years.
I think ours was the largest Easter attendance (not sure about communicant numbers) for at least twenty years.
My Spy tells me that there were at least 5 people at the Vigil who didn't attend on Easter morning itself, so our total attendance (not counting twicers!) for the two major Easter services was 71.
Bearing in mind that we put out flags, and blow trumpets, if a Sunday Mass passes the 30 mark, FatherInCharge was understandably jubilant when I spoke to him this morning
OTOH, our Christmas 2021 attendances were very low, even compared with 2020...quite why, we're not sure...
We had 150 or so for the main Easter morning service, so it was nice to have the church actually start to feel full. (Well, except for the front couple of pews - they were still avoided like the plague!)
That's probably about 2/3 of our recent pre-Covid Easter numbers.
Palm Sunday was marginally better than Easter at our place due to some of the regulars travelling over Easter. Easter was about two-thirds of last year, when no-one was travelling. Good Friday was poor due to folks travelling as well, and the odd time - 7pm - which was forced by various work schedules. I'll be interested to see what tomorrow brings.
I may have enquired about this before on Ye Olde Shippe, but can't find it.
A number of the CoE's collects exhibit an apparently counter-intuitive shift between singular and plural verbs. Example, this week:
God of Life,
who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross,
and by his glorious resurrection have delivered us from the power of our enemy ...
In the second half of the relative clause, God is still One but has attracted a plural form of the verb.
Am I missing some abstruse grammatical point here?
Comments
Oh, do please report back and let us know what you think.
Not sure if they still use the same incense, but to me it had a rather peculiar - almost medicinal - odour. Not unpleasing, but not at all like the usual Prinknash or whatever!
I saw the 360 degree whirling at a church at Honfleur in Normandy. The back of the building filled up with tourists for the procession at the end, all wielding cameras. The spectacle must have been in a guide book or something. I thought it was odd because incense isn't used after the Eucharistic Prayer, and I've never seen it used at the end before or since.
However, there are YouTube videos of High Mass at Nassau Anglican Cathedral, Bahamas, where the skilful young thurifer does his stuff during the final hymn, as well as during the Introit.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=xeRHUD3yYjA&t=251s
You don't always have to resist temptation.
15 or more years ago, St Sanity had a couple of Canadian students in the congregation. The young fellow could swing the thurible pretty well, but the woman was quite something else again - the full 360 degrees in each direction and then crossed over, forwards and backwards. Alas, our new rector did away with incense, a detraction from our worship.
At Our Place, the sacristy is immediately next to the chancel, so it's easy for the thurifer to put the thurible away after the Eucharistic Prayer. That means the charcoal is out, and the bowl is cooling down, by the time Madam Sacristan gets to tidy everything up!
Should destiny every take shipmates to the Cathedral at Santiago de Composteal, the huge thurible (El Botafumeiro) is used at the very end of mass, possibly after the blessing (I can't recall). For the curious... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_s2Rf0Z0eE
Yes, I see.
Come to think of it, I wonder why Our Place doesn't cense the BVM after Mass? She's in the north aisle, next to the Lady Chapel, and the sacristy is on the south side, so it would be a similar manoeuvre...
Our final hymn is sung after the blessing, and FInC makes his way to Our Lady during the last verse thereof.
So far, Holy Week services are at about 2/3 of pre-Covid norms. A typical Sunday is about half pre-Covid norms at the moment, which isn't a surprise: the people that come to Holy Week services tend to be the more dedicated ones.
We'll see about the big Sunday service - pre-Covid, we'd get a lot of people.
Happy Easter, Shippies! Christ is Risen!
Much the same at Our Place, although earlier this year the Sunday attendance began to pick up a bit, to pre-Covid levels.
Holy Week numbers have also been a bit lower, but I haven't yet been informed by my Spy as to the attendance at the Easter Vigil (8pm yesterday) or the 1030am Mass today.
I think we - and probably many other Places - are being affected by what I refer to as the CAW factor.
This is a combination of Covid, Away (the first opportunity for an Easter holiday for quite some time), and Work. Quite a few of our people are care workers, nurses, or similar, and, of course, can't always arrange shifts so as to avoid Sunday mornings!
We had 15 adults and 4 children this morning, slightly lower than a normal post lockdown Sunday, but not bad for Easter. For some reason Easter tends to be one of the worst attended Sundays in the year.
It's not impossible that at least some of the adults were people visiting friends and/or relatives in Our Parish - we had a Christmas Day Mass one year with at least 30 *strangers* in addition to our own regulars !
The Vigil, never an especially well-attended service, had 10 - IIRC, it was about a dozen last year. For many years, we didn't have a Vigil, but FatherInCharge started it up again at the first opportunity he had, which was Easter 2021.
The norm has been 24 or fewer in recent weeks, thanks to CAW.
At my place about half were folk that I had not seen before ( though I have only been attending for three years), people of all ages, including three under five: possibly some were visiting families, but it was good to see them, even one couple accompanied by two well behaved dogs.
In my local town, Holy Week services have been ecumenical, supported equally by Anglicans and Methodists and the odd Roman Catholic( Though there is no RC church here ).
One odd side-effect of the paucity of servers is that FatherInCharge insists on carrying in the processional cross himself. This looks very peculiar (IMHO), and is also dangerous, as the cross in question is very dilapidated and urgently needs repairing...
One or two large-ish families were Away, so even with the good attendance we had, there could well have been at least a dozen more. I think that, despite the CAW factor, a lot of people had made certain that they would be in church today, even if they had to miss out Palm Sunday and the rest of Holy Week!
Incidentally, the two Places I went to online today (one in a certain Scottish city, and the other in Amsterdam) both had quite sizeable congregations. Excellent sermons, fine organ music, and rousing hymns from both Places, but a tad less ceremonial from Amsterdam...though the latter did bring in the (already lit) Paschal Candle before the first hymn, and the pastor wore a smart alb and white stole.
@Pendragon makes an interesting point about bedtimes. All Our Place's Holy Week services (with the exception of the Good Friday Liturgy at 12 noon) were in the evenings at various times - 7pm, 730pm, and 8pm.
This makes it hard for young families to attend any services other than those on Palm Sunday and Easter Day, although I know of one or two Places that have some sort of family/children's *workshop/activities* on Good Friday. Maybe we could have a look a doing something similar next year, possibly at the same time as the Liturgy. Maundy Thursday ISTM is very much a service for the committed adults, but YMMV.
Relatedly, I have wondered if your church would benefit from a youth worker, even just part-time - seems like there is lots of potential there. I don't know if that's the kind of thing the diocese could possibly help you fund.
As to a youth worker, yes, I'd like to see one in post, but the funding might be a bit problematic. Still worth exploring, though, perhaps in conjunction with our next-door parish.
As to green space etc., yes, we do have some *grounds*, but they're rather small in area. Again, though, a possibility.
Thanks for the ideas - my poor diminished brain was at a bit of a loss!
He was so amazed at the numbers he took a squint in the register after the service and attendance was 134 over 16s, 41 under 16s, 99 communicants. Total population of village c1200.
He said the choir were OK but the hymns were a bit slow, someone* decided to change the list 😡 to include Thine be the glory, and the whole rounded-off with a rendition of Wesley's Choral Song he described as "mangled, good job they didn't attempt the fugue" 🤣😂🤣😂
* I have my suspicions...
I don't understand this (Anglican?) obsession with the processional cross. It's a nice to have, especially for grand occasions with plenty of personnel. But if there is no 'procession' as such, only the priest and a couple of others, it makes no sense.
Good Friday was strange in a different way; at the church I attended for an otherwise beautifully executed liturgy the processional cross (veiled!) led both the entry and final processions. To my mind the only cross that should have been carried was the one for Veneration. Clashing of symbols.
Yes, we have very rarely used the processional cross in recent years, and it would be better left in the vestry until such time as it can be repaired. FInC has the peculiar habit of wrapping a piece of ribbon around it, in the correct liturgical colour, of course...
I agree that using a processional cross at Good Friday is indeed a clash of symbols, and quite superfluous - I'm happy to report that ours was not used on GF, but the large wooden crucifix that usually hangs in the sacristy came into its own. Not for carrying in and out, but just for the Veneration, after which it was placed on the otherwise bare High Altar
Oh duh, of course not. Still, planting them would still be appropriate imo.
We could sow more, but much of the narrow strip of land next to the church is north-facing, and right up against the church wall.
Sweet/true wild violets like shade so would work there - 'Our Lady's Modesty', though, is maybe not my *favourite* Marian flower title....but would certainly fit the perfumed flower option.
We have some nice varieties of clover already as well - I sowed the seeds myself some years ago.
We had 130 communicants on Easter day itself. These figures are higher than any Easter in the last forty years.
I think ours was the largest Easter attendance (not sure about communicant numbers) for at least twenty years.
My Spy tells me that there were at least 5 people at the Vigil who didn't attend on Easter morning itself, so our total attendance (not counting twicers!) for the two major Easter services was 71.
Bearing in mind that we put out flags, and blow trumpets, if a Sunday Mass passes the 30 mark, FatherInCharge was understandably jubilant when I spoke to him this morning
OTOH, our Christmas 2021 attendances were very low, even compared with 2020...quite why, we're not sure...
That's probably about 2/3 of our recent pre-Covid Easter numbers.
A number of the CoE's collects exhibit an apparently counter-intuitive shift between singular and plural verbs. Example, this week:
God of Life,
who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross,
and by his glorious resurrection have delivered us from the power of our enemy ...
In the second half of the relative clause, God is still One but has attracted a plural form of the verb.
Am I missing some abstruse grammatical point here?