The Assumption

I had company at mass this evening. Rio arrived to stay with us on Sunday evening last: she is here for three weeks, studying at the University of Gloucestershire. Her father is a professional cyclist: it seems that betting on the outcome of cycle races is big business in Japan.

Rio is studying philosophy at a private university in Tokyo, founded by the Jesuits 100 years ago. Though a Buddhist, she expressed the wish to come along to church when I said I was going. Her English is better than most, I'd say, so she was able to follow the book pretty well, but after communion I must say I was fazed at first when she inquired about "the crisp".

Budapest (or rather Pest)

Sharing my sleeper from Paris to Munich, I found lovely Elena. Formerly from the Urals, she lives with a husband, who drives South to go fishing twice a year in Croatia. He had dropped her in Strasbourg, from where she'd caught the train to Paris for a week's sightseeing and shopping - less of the latter because of "too much choice". Now, she was en route to Vienna, where the fisherman would be put her into his net and drive back home to Moscow. He works in logistics, but his passion is competing to catch carp.

Elena, born in the USSR, says that, while not much interested in politics, she feels she is part of a lost generation. Her reading for idle moments is H.V. Morton's "In search of England" - in Russian. She has never been there, but taught English at secondary level before marrying.

It felt warm already on our early morning arrival in Munich. I had never spent any time in that city before, so walked rather eagerly towards the centre, some of the architecture of which was older (and finer) than I had anticipated. I discovered the baroque vastness of St Peter's Church, where again I found myself at Mass - in German, but ad orientem. The priest dispensed at the altar rails, mainly to kneeling communicants who received on the tongue. Moving afterwards to the Cathedral, I found another Mass about to begin, this time with choir and a very full congregation, many in traditional dress. Some celebration upon the eve of Pentecost evidently: I didn't stay long enough to discover what.

It was time to catch my next train, to Budapest. This was extremely full. The fine weather didn't last: cloudy in Salzburg, by Vienna it was pouring with rain. However, as we were leaving Austria behind, the sun came out again, glinting on the largest array of wind turbines I've ever seen.

Having crossed the Danube, the train arrived here just before five, at a very different sort of station from Munich's Hauptbahnhof. "Scruffy" sums it up, but I felt better about things after a lemon sorbet from the ice cream lady, and learning that the main façade is adorned with statues of James Watt and George Stephenson. Having worked out how to collect my onward ticket from the machine, I walked off to explore, and soon found myself in Kerepesi Cemetery, the Père Lachaise of Budapest. Idling round an eclectic collection of impressive tombs and memorials on a fine evening was just the perfect antidote to a day spent in a train crowded with lively children. A helpful man appeared at one point and handed me a plan of who was buried where, but I fear the names meant little to me. More usefully, he pointed me in the right direction for something nice to eat.

Old pals, Old Palace

When Fr. Felix Stephens and I were in the same house at school, we scrambled to get the county cricket scores, he supporting Gloucestershire and I Warwickshire. Bumping into him in Oxford on Sunday morning after a long gap, neither of us had anything to say about the dismal performance by England's batsmen in Abu Dhabi.

It was chance that took Caroline and me to the Catholic Chaplaincy for Mass, and chance also that Felix happened to be preaching: the desert and the marketplace was his theme - expounded at rather greater length than I'm currently used to sitting through, but probably not so fully as in the discourses we were subjected to when I was an undergraduate (and Fr. Michael Hollings the Chaplain).

Felix, evidently not at present able to live up to his name, hinted that, not just he but all of Oxford was seething at the decision to withdraw him from his post as Master of St Benet's at the end of the current academic year.

The new mass wording

Yesterday - the feast of St Gregory - was an appropriate day to go for some "training" about the new mass wording. It's been handed down to us, somewhat controversially, from the Vatican: was Pope St Gregory equally authoritarian in his day? (In this mid-19th Century stained glass image, from one of the windows in our Cheltenham St Gregory's Church, he is seen instructing Augustine and six other Benedictine monks, before their departure for England in AD 597.)

Jenny Baker, from Catholic Faith Exploration, led the training at Sacred Hearts Hall: I thought she spoke well on the whole, starting with an examination of what baptism is all about: really, she said, the Anglican "Christening" is a better word, denoting the conferring of authority to exercise ministry, that is to be Christ-like. "All ministry is ministry of humble service, with Christ as the model," she reminded us. Hospitality is a non-negotiable element in the life of the Church: not an innovation! We need to risk rebuff, and recall Hebrews 13:2, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

Good to concentrate on this, and in doing so I expect we shall soon learn to accept many of the infelicities of the new translation.

Freedom (again)

Over supper, we've been "listening again" to the first of this year's Reith Lectures, given this morning by Aung San Suu Kyi. Such a brave lady! I was struck by her statement that, notwithstanding her Theravada Buddhism, her commitment to non-violence was not for moral so much as practical political reasons. One of several Christian references however was to Jesus' plea, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me."

Earlier, in the mass of SS Peter and Paul, the first two readings also spoke of what Daw Suu called "unfreedom" - that of the respective eponymous heroes of the day (or rather of tomorrow, since it was a vigil mass). We don't know how lucky we are; and yet how often do we pass over the opportunities so many Burmese daily make, to assert our claim to freedoms under threat?

paper white

Caroline was out early this morning, sweeping our drive after our first really serious fall of snow this Winter: we have got off lightly up till now. I was quite surprised that the newspapers had got through, as the roads are treacherous. Gritters don't seem to work on a Sunday, I concluded as I slithered by foot to mass this evening. I sneaked in a prayer for a better performance by our batsmen after the Perth debacle.

Induction whoop

Well, perhaps not a full-blown Whoop!, but even a round of applause is rare enough in St Gregory's church! At the Induction this evening of Fr. Bosco as our new parish priest there were no less than two outbursts of clapping led by the presiding Bishop Declan of Clifton.

The Bishop spoke about human beings as latecomers to Planet Earth; and Christians as a very young people in Earth terms. So we can identify with St Paul talking about us giving birth to something new, by producing the fruits of God within our lives. We are not a settled people, the Bishop said, but a pilgrim people, on the way to perfection - which was entirely appropriate for today's feast of St Teresa of Avila.

More photographs here.