[Magdalen] Two to go

[Roger Stokes]

On 04/04/2015 20:55, Scott Knitter wrote:
> Our current parish practice seems to have moved more toward
> practicality as a determination of whether to do certain things: the
> cope needs to be held only if it's rather big on the particular
> celebrant and it would help to have the cope held while walking. I
> think traditionally the cope is held because that's what you do with a
> cope (and it is indeed practical), and if the cope is being worn, we
> walk three abreast and hold the cope; if the celebrant is in chasuble,
> we walk single file. Sometimes the old way is actually easier because
> you don't have to talk about it every time. But of course the rector,
> and to some degree the celebrant, has the last word.
>
> I'm just wishing that complex liturgies like the Great Vigil of Easter
> were thought about maybe a week in advance and decisions made then,
> rather than in rehearsal on the day of. :) But that's not a new wish
> nor unique to the present clergy.

If iy's the first year of the current incumbency the rector may think of 
doing something but then finds in regearsal it doesn't really work.  
Other things become apparent when you have a congregation.  There is a 
new priest in my local church and he is apparently changing some of the 
ritual (I didn't see the old way because I was in my own parish).  
Yesterday the reproaches were meant to cover people coming to venerate 
the cross but they finished before the queue of people did.

Tonight it was the Easter Vigil, starting with the (already lit) fire 
outside.  I didn't hear the three-fold "The light of Christ" as the 
candle was taken up the aisle because we were still outside when the 
candle was placed in its stand. Part of the delay was candles being lit 
individually as we came in rather than the light being passed from 
candle to candle among the congregation.

Roger