Thursday 29 May 2025
Our Lady Immaculate
Carnage at the start of The Day of Ascension service. Nobody knew the tune to Lord Enthroned in Heavenly Splendour.
With no organist to lead the way, Canon P had, by his own admission, started the first verse “too high”. We did our best as a congregation to keep up, in the spirit that no man should be left behind. But the sound lacked divinity. A congregation of about 30 performing a series of solos, many out of key. It was an act of mercy that Canon P brought things to a close a verse early.
It was clear how much we’d missed musical accompaniment. Usually I find the code to unlocking hymns standard. As I’ve said before, if you don’t know the tune in the first verse you’ll be belting it out by the second. And this has been an immutable law up to now. But a law doesn’t apply when there’s no specific source of truth. Like an organist.
That wasn’t the case in the service itself.
A woman in a pew behind me had set about winning the award for fastest person to say “Thanks be to God” during prayers. By the second go she’d finished before I’d even started. By the third I didn’t say anything. She topped it by finishing the Gloria before the rest of us had reached the sins of the world.
I wondered what the hurry was. Had this become her habit over the years? And just as I allowed myself to get irritated by it she gave me a big warm smile as we shared the peace.
So a bit of an unusual service, but a first Holy Day of Observation for me, and a new feeling that goes with an early summer evening service. With the sun setting and the sparrows still chirping outside. At least they knew how to sing.