Celebrating the Assumption

My celebration began with first Vespers of the Solemnity here, on Thursday evening:


And ended with Solemn Mass here on Friday evening:



Going to Mass here is a distinctive experience. Since I last attended Mass here - quite some time now - there appears to have been some incorporation, I suspect just by custom and practice on the part of the congregation, of some Extraordinary Form rubrics into the Ordinary Form celebration. More than ever, the choir seem to have displaced the possibility of the congregation joining in with singing even relatively well known Gregorian chant settings. Whilst I expect that every parish has its own challenges as far as genuine participation in the Liturgy goes, Brompton Oratory's challenges are perhaps completely sui generis.

In between was fitted:


1. A visit to the Museum of the Order of St John, now an Order of Chivalry by Royal Charter of the English Crown. It traces its history back, in pre-reformation times, to the Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem. The work for which it is now best known is ... the St John Ambulanc Brigade. The order is also associated with an eye hospital in Jersualem, providing health care to residents of the Palestinian territories.The Museum and Library of the Order of St John is housed in the 16th century gatehouse, St John's Gate, that formed the southern entrance to a Priory covering 10-acres of Clerkenwell in medieval times.


2. A visit to the Italian Church in Clerkenwell. This is a rather lovely Church, dedicated to St Peter. I was particularly taken by the altar dedicated to St Joseph.



3. A visit to the bookshop at the London Institute of Education ....(yawn)


4. A visit to St Anselm's and St Cecilia's at Holborn. Sorry, no website or photo.


5. A visit to the Wren Church of St Bride, hidden just off Fleet Street. The Church on this site suffered in two particular fires - the Great Fire of 1666 and the German fire bombing of the City of London in 1940. During the reconstruction work after the latter, exploration was made of the crypts below the site, which revealed settlement going back to Roman times. It is possible to visit the crypt and see parts of the earliest walls of the Church, and a section of Roman flooring. The more modern history of the Church is associated with printing and the newspaper industry, which at one time dominated the Fleet Street area.