Trying to Deacon at Solemn Mass

Yesterday afternoon, while the rest of England was shut for football, about 130 of us gathered at the Chapel of the Knights of Malta in the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in St John's Wood.

The occasion was the 25th anniversary of the wedding of Jamie and Joanna Bogle. Solemn Mass in the old rite was celebrated by Fr John Emerson of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter, assisted by me as Deacon and Fr Michael Cullinan as subdeacon.

I spent some time trying to make sense of Fortescue. The trouble is, to understand some of it, you really need to be there. Thanks to Duncan Gallie (pictured right), I managed to get away without making too much of a hash of my duties. With me to read on the tube, I brought the relevant pages of Fortescue as well as the page fro the liber with the tone for the gospel so that I could get that firmly in my head. What did I forget? The notes for the sermon.

Fortunately, I was there early enough to spend some quiet time before Mass, remembering most of what I had prepared. People were quite complementary afterwards. So I will now post what I would have said if I had brought my notes!

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