Saturday 10 May 2025
Fourth Sunday of Easter: Vocations Sunday.
Our Lady Immaculate
A first Saturday evening service (not including Easter). The FA Vase Cup Final was on Sunday, and we had Wembley tickets to see Whitstable Town FC. That meant an early start.
The church seemed full for a Saturday evening. Was that why the church was so full? Was everybody going to Wembley?
I took a different seat, part of my informal plan to see the church from different angles. I was near the Marian shrine, but behind a pillar, meaning Canon P was just a voice for much of the service.
I didn’t light a candle but instead watched others light them. It might seem trivial, but I’m always conscious of some sort of affectation. Perhaps I’ll wait until it seems natural rather than performative. Not a great explanation, but it’s something like that.
This was the first Mass since the election of our new Pope Leo XIV. Maybe a candle would have been appropriate.
This wasn’t my usual service, which meant hymns, three of them, making it a nice change. I didn’t know any of them, but in that typical way in church, if you don’t know the tune in the first verse you’ll be belting it out by the second.
The same goes for the Gloria and the Creed, which is still beyond my long-term memory.
But in our church there’s help on that from the old lady who sits at the back. Her annunciation and volume are clear and act as a kind of guide to those who can’t find the right page in the missal quickly enough. Or who still hold on to a little too much pride and prefer not to be seen reading.
Anyway, this lady knows it all. And the hymns. Even the ones no one else does. She doesn’t realise but she has helped me through a service on more than one occasion. I need to thank her. And ask her name.
The Gospel reading was short and memorable. Jesus urged Peter to look after the sheep, to look after the lambs. There didn’t seem much to take from it other than the simplicity of the message. And the effect it must have had on Peter. Fitting too just days after white smoke.
The church was marking Vocations Sunday, celebrating the call to vocation.
I’ve never seriously considered that call. Although as I’ve got older the idea of the religious life has grown in its appeal. Perhaps not in all respects – my wife would object for a start – but the chance to serve God, to serve others, and nothing else. I couldn’t do what priests do. But it’s a nice thought to pretend I could come close.
I ran into a couple on the way home who I’d met after one of the 7am services during Lent. I had walked home that day chanting their names to remember them. I still needed another reminder and got home chanting their names all over again.