Covid Easter

(written during Covid lockdown) 

This has been a strange Lent – during which, whether we chose to or not, we have all been fasting from many things we would rather not have fasted from – “the ‘Lentiest’ Lent that has ever Lented”, according to a local priest. As we have “attended” mass via online livestream from the Christ Prince of Peace, Weybridge, it has been impossible not to feel a bit sorry for our dear Fr. Con, saying the liturgy in solitude in an empty church. But I am encouraged – and perhaps Fr. Con is too – by the wonderful Bishop Kallistos Ware, who wrote of his first experience of an Orthodox liturgy:

Life and Death

“Those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life” (Rom. 8:5-6)

Happy Pentecost to you all!

I have been thinking about life and death a lot recently.

Easter in the Highlands of Sumatra

This year, sadly, is the first Easter since getting married which I have had to celebrate apart from the rest of my family. However, I had the unexpected blessing of being able to do so amongst the Karo Batak people of the highlands of northern Sumatra.

The Holy Land

We have recently spent ten days in the Holy Land, on a pilgrimage with our parish. We are so excited by all the things we have seen, the places we have been, the people we have met – I hardly know where to begin. So, a few impressions…

Two Easters

I have had the unusual privilege of celebrating the night of the Resurrection twice this year.

Assumption

On the Assumption we attended the Cathedral of the Assumption in Penang. One bishop, five priests, at least a dozen servers, plus innumerable ushers, readers, ministers, singers, instrumentalists, and a congregation of at least a thousand. Five glorious mysteries of the rosary, with readings, each in a different language (English, Tamil, Chinese, Tagalog, Malay). Then mass in the same five languages (plus Latin and Greek of course, which makes seven!). It is such a breath of fresh air, for those of us who normally live in a land where cynicism and secularism seem to threaten the Church at every corner, to be somewhere where, despite the threat of real persecution, the faith truly thrives. If any of you ever feel disheartened about the state of the Church in the West, let me tell you some of the impressions I am left with out here:

Corpus Christi

I wanted to tell you about a wonderful Corpus Christi celebration A.F. and I had the good fortune to be part of two Sundays ago, in Penang, Malaysia. We turned up for mass at 5.30 p.m. at the not-very-large Church of St. Francis Xavier, in the centre of Georgetown. The church was so full it was overflowing, with people standing all the way out the doorway, down the steps and onto the front driveway. There were well over 1000 people there, and we soon found out why: This was the first time ever that permission had been given in Penang (a state in a predominantly Muslim country) for a public Corpus Christi procession, and practically the whole Catholic population of Georgetown had turned out for it.