Preaching

Grief can be a tricky thing.

Yesterday at Mass we had a large number of visitors, as the school was being used for a meeting of the Jesuit schools, in addition to a full compliment of  boarders due to the sports going on this weekend and a surprising number of new visitors and there were four priests concelebrating Mass. Not our usual quiet still worship. The New New Rector (as the boys call him as opposed to the New Rector or the Old Rector - the result of having three rectors in the last couple of years) introduced the priest who was to give the sermon. As he did so he said that in the two months he had been Rector at this school he had discovered that the boys AND the adult congregation did not like long homily's so he had recommended a shortish homily to the guest.

The guest priest said that he had been given his instructions with more of an explanation, and that the New New Rector had set out to discover why there was quiet anarchy in Chapel and what could be done to change it. The boys had told him that they liked the singing but disliked long homilies that begin with quoting the scripture just read. He has radically changed his preaching style and most certainly captured the boys interests and attention and surprised them by allowing their voices to be heard.

Hearing this story I suddenly could hear my father telling much the same story. He went to an Anglican Church school during the Second World War and just after the war ended received a new younger Rector who set out to discover what the boys wanted in a service and discovered much the same thing as the New New Rector. He too listened and became known as Eight Minute for his sermons never lasted more than eight minutes. 

Suddenly I missed Dad more vividly and painfully than I could bear and fled my seat by way of the side chapel close by. Once there I met an acquaintance, younger than me, whose husband died four months ago and has since joined our congregation. She also could not stay because of the crowd and I learned that she had joined our congregation for the quiet, stillness of our Masses and the great beauty of the choir and because amongst us she was reasonably anonymous - something she needs at present. 

We sat together on a bench in the bright May sunshine bonded in silent grief until the New Rector, who was visiting Harare this weekend and not saying Mass, and marking our exits arrived with a tray of tea which he poured out before joining us in the sunshine on our bench.