This is the season
In the words of the Exsultet, This is the night! The Easter Vigil, often described as the high point of the liturgical year. For the people who have been preparing to receive the sacraments of initiation on this night, the description is a good one; but in the whole of our Christian life we might do better to describe the Vigil - or, better, the whole of the Paschal Triduum - as the centre of the liturgical year, the centre of our lives as Christians. Each year we prepare for it during Lent by prayer, and by thinking about how we live our lives, making a conscious effort to follow Jesus Christ more closely. We enter Holy Week ready to hear again the Scriptures which bring the mysteries of God's plan before us, and walk through the events of the Last Supper, Good Friday, the awfulness of death, the hope of the Vigil, the joy of the Resurrection. By Sunday morning we are very properly ready for a bit of a rest.
But what's this? Fifty days for our delight! It often seems that parishes are great at the seasons of preparation - in Advent and Lent you can't get stirred for shared lunches, Scripture study, Stations of the Cross and days of recollection, but Christmas and Easter arrive in a blare of trumpets, then fall away to white vestments and extra flowers. The effort we put into preparing for them is all too often not balanced by the actual celebration throughout the season.
One of the ways in which the Church shows that it is still celebrating is by continuing to highlight the sacraments of initiation and those who will receive them. Many parishes invite the Bishop to confirm their young people and schedule their children's First Holy Communion during the fifty days, recognising that every sacrament has its roots in Baptism, knowing that the most appropriate time for a Christian community to make new members is during the Easter season. The liturgy itself makes all the connections: light, water, oil, the story of the young Church in the Scriptures, the eucharist we share. In mystagogia new Christians explore the Church and the world with new eyes, from the point of view of those who have just been baptised. But it is an exploration we all need - and this is the season!
Cometh the hour…
I'd always dutifully thought of the miracle at Cana in terms of a foretaste of the new wine of the Kingdom. I've always listened to the homily! But at Mass today another thought crept in, a picture of Jesus at this morning's wedding, waiting for a sign: when to begin the Great Work. Having refused to turn stones to bread for his own hunger and called his disciples together for whatever is to come, suddenly here is his mother at his elbow, giving him the same story: the wine has run out: my son, they have no wine! Jesus has promised his disciples visions of angels ascending and descending, but here is a crisis on the catering front. He says to her, Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come. But Mary has had years to ponder the angel's message, and she recognises hours when they come. She gives the instructions: Do whatever he tells you, and all are astounded at the quality of the wine-from-water.
It is as though Jesus realised that the sign he was waiting for might not be the mighty voice of his Father, but the quiet voice of his mother speaking out a human need. And so his ministry begins, life-giving miracles and meals with friends, transfiguration on the mountaintop and stories of lost coins. This is a man who will know if a sick woman touches his cloak to find healing, who will find faith in unexpected places and change his attitude, who will fight against ordinary, unthinking human injustice. Heaven may well open, with angels ascending and descending, but in the meantime Jesus goes among people who are in need. Nothing is too small or too great for the One who has put death beneath his feet, the second person of the Trinity.
Following Jesus, trying to be like him, is something which comes gradually. I've written elsewhere about how I fell into the Church through the liturgy and the music, a route I wouldn't change. But it meant that Jesus himself became for me a public figure glimpsed through the liturgy, whether as one of the 'presences of Christ' or a the star of the Gospels. In catechesis, he wears many hats: Son of God, Son of Man, Saviour, Emmanuel, Head of the Body which is the Church. To meet Jesus for the first time as someone who responds to the people he meets every day is something altogether different. Jesus challenged by his mother, Jesus, compassionate, Jesus, quick on the uptake, Jesus, powerful. All these hats, these titles are for something, and that something is us, his people. And not when the hour comes, but now, in our need.
What does this morning's Gospel mean for us today? Maybe, if we are following Jesus Christ and trying to be like he is, just maybe it's a reminder that the right time for compassionate action is not later on, as a New Year's resolution, or during Lent, or when we think we're ready, but now, now, now.
Listen: whose voices do you hear?
Our great praise and our quiet prayer
The parish priest wants more people to join the choir. Six, he says, is not enough; there should be at least ten of us. And in a way he has a point. We're not a large parish, but there are certainly people scattered around the church with good voices, singing out on Sunday mornings, and every now and then he makes an appeal for more members. I'm grateful for his support, but I know from talking to people that one of the barriers to joining is our Wednesday evening practice: parents are busy with families, or aren't yet home from work, older people often don't like coming out on dark winter nights. So we adapt. The ones who come on Wednesdays, do. They learn the psalm, the communion song, the acclamations, so they can give a lead. On Sundays we have a short rehearsal before Mass, in the meeting room, to which all are welcome. People who can pick things up quickly, who like the singing, join us then, and everyone learns the psalm response, or a Communion chant, at a short introduction about seven minutes before Mass begins.
We'll never sing the Hallelujah Chorus like this - but why would we want to, at 10.30am in St Joseph's, with the Children's Liturgy group making their cheerful way back into the assembly, and the grown-ups welcoming them and assimilating the homily... What we might be moving towards is a gradual understanding that singing is something we do together, as a community gathered to worship in this place; and that our song is sometimes our great praise and sometimes our quiet prayer.
The women of the choir are mothers and grandmothers. Their attendance at choir practice and indeed at Mass on Sundays is affected by whether they're on grandparent duty or not. They are also (and I know you'll recognise this phenomenon) the ones who make the coffee after Mass, arrange the flowers, run the Church Bazaar, populate parish prayer groups, lead baptism preparation, visit the local prison. It's my hope that as people join with the song they might also join with the life of the church: not just the coffee and the flowers and the bazaar, but also the work of being Christ to others in their families, workplaces and in the town. I came into the Church twenty-seven years ago via a group of young people singing their way through the Celebration Hymnal in a presbytery in south London, and now I could not be anywhere else. What surprised me (again) when I came to St Joseph's, and began to look after the music and some of the liturgy, was how many people have taken this same route, and how much the liturgy sustains them in their lives of continuing conversion. Not as in 'Oh, the music was nice this morning', but as in 'I've been singing that psalm all the way through our OFSTED'.
Sing the Lord a new song.
Let the sea and all its creatures,
the coastland and its people,
fill the world with praise.
Let every village and town,
from Kedar on the plain
to Sela in the hills,
take up the joyful song.
Sing glory to the Lord,
give praise across the world
Isaiah 42:10-12
AnnB