Services for Today
9:15 am Family Communion # MB
11:00 am Parish Communion # WF
11:00 am Morning Service # LH
6:30 pm Evening Service # LH
#=1662
Next Sunday
8:00 am Holy Communion # LH
9:15 am Family Service MB
11:00 am Family Service WF
11:00 am Morning Service # LH
6:30 pm Evening Service # LH
Your coming in and going out ……
Mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
which thou hast prepared before the face of all people
to be a light to lighten the Gentiles:
and to be the glory of thy people Israel
(Nunc Dimittis – Luke 2:30-32)
Please pray for……
Imogen Strathern to be baptised on 5th February at WF
& Jemima Rutland to be baptised on 18th March at WF
& Esme Barrett, Ellen Brabrook, Claire Chate, John Copsey, John Hennessy, Ray Langstone, Les Ridge, Georgie Skinner, Peter Thompson, Rosie Thompson
& others who have asked for our prayers
MB FF meeting
7:45pm Tuesday 31st January at Mt Bures Hall
MB Quiz Night….
Friday 24th February at The Thatchers’ Arms
Friends of St Andrew’s concert….
Easy listening music & light supper
Saturday 25th February at 7:30 pm
Tickets £8.50 from Carol Bird (01787-227889) & Shop
Lent Course….
Handing on the Torch
(order your booklet now – £2:00)
Sacred words for a secular society
to be held at the Vicarage at 7:30 pm on Mondays
27th February, 5th, 12th 19th & 26th March
Friends of St Andrew’s art exhibition….
Great paintings on view and to buy – 5th/6th/7th May
More details from Caroline Post 01787-227282
Please welcome Ramon Ariori, our preacher at Mt Bures, Wormingford and at Lt Horkesley Evensong
He would like you to have his text before you: John 1:1-18
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
The same was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light,
that all men through him might believe.
He was not that Light but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
He was in the world, and the world was made by him,
and the world knew him not.
He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
(and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,)
full of grace and truth.
John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake,
He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.
For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son,
which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
For more information about anything in this Bulletin contact the Vicar
Items for inclusion in next weeks BENEFICE BULLETIN by Friday please
Vicar: The Rev’d Henry Heath, Wormingford Vicarage CO6 3AZ
01 787 227398 email:vicar@wormingford.com
See your parish website:
www.wormingford.com, www.littlehorkesley.com or www.mountbures.com
Ronald Blythe waits in the dark and cold for the sun to rise
THE weatherman proclaims an amazing sunrise. I cannot recall him saying this before. At the moment, the window frames total darkness. It is 6 a.m. Not a person to miss a touch of glory, however, I keep my eye on the outside. A Stansted-bound plane hovers in view, moving like the Epiphany star, brightly, delib¬erately, to its rightful destination. Then an even darker darkness. It will be a long time before the promised splendour.
There is a slight frost. Not at all like the one in Coleridge’s poem. He is in his 20s, in the cottage at Nether Stowey. It is glory time, too. His wife has gone to bed. The fire in the grate is no more than a flutter. He rocks the cradle and promises his baby son a glorious life. Outside:
The frost performs its secret ministry
Unhelped by any wind. . .
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings. . .
Long ago, I sat in that same room, stilled by its confusion of privacy and fame as the youthful father’s eyes turned from his child to his page. I now wait for the sunrise in an older, larger room that faces due east. Some say that the old people preferred to live in this direction as disease came from the south. Possibly it was because the wells and ponds were polluted by the summer heat. Or it could have been a religious thing. We still lie east to west in our graves.
Gradually, taking its time, reminding itself that it is Phoebus making his entrance, the sun comes up over the barn, a truly fantastic sight, all golden lances and display, shooting radiance everywhere. And at 8 a.m. precisely. It throws everything before it into silhouette.
As this house creaks in the intense cold, Coleridge promises his son a country life for all seasons — one where God is “the Great Universal Teacher”. Outside my ancient farmhouse, the scene quietens down, as it were. Gold becomes yellow; black grows green; shadows become familiar objects.
My Epiphany sermons take in the Dark Ages, which, as we now know, were not dark at all. Think of the light of Sutton Hoo. But, before Christ, there was this melancholy, this northern-Europe fatalism, this lack of conviction that the spring and summer would return. This acceptance of Valhalla as a mead hall in which only the brave in this life had entrance.
The theme brought me back to the naming of England, where eventually the raiders would settle, grow corn, follow a star. They were called Angles because they came from an angle-shaped province in Germany. Angle-land became England. Except here, where both dawn and sunsets are part of a unique climate of what is still called East Anglia.
Another little boy lies sleeping, as intellectuals as well as ordinary folk peer down at him. A young clergyman writes an Epiphany hymn in his son’s exercise-book. It is “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning”
Thoughts from the Vicarage…
February brings with it St Valentine’s Day on February 14th and, traditionally, this is the day when young couples promise to love each other for ever and begin to make wedding plans.
The Prayerbook tells us that:
“Marriage is a gift of God in creation through which husband and wife may know the grace of God. Marriage is given that, as man and woman grow together in love and trust, they shall be united with one another in heart, body and mind, as Christ is united with his bride, the Church.
“The gift of marriage brings husband and wife together in the delight and tenderness of sexual union and joyful commitment to the end of their lives. It is given as the foundation of family life in which children are born and nurtured and in which each member of the family, in good times and in bad, may find companionship, strength and comfort, and grow to maturity in love.
“Marriage is a way of life made holy by God and blessed by the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ as he was at the wedding at Cana in Galilee.” (It was at the wedding of Cana in Galilee that Jesus changed water into wine; it was a significant occasion as this was his first miracle).
“Marriage is a sign of unity and loyalty which all should uphold and honour. It enriches society and strengthens community. No one should enter into it lightly or selfishly but reverently and responsibly in the sight of almighty God.”
This is read at the beginning of every marriage service and it is only after all this has been made clear that the couple each give their consent to the other and make solemn vows, and in token of this they give each other a ring. (A ring is a good symbol for marriage since it is completely round and therefore has no end)
After the couple are married and have completed the legal formalities of signing the register, I always have a quiet word with them. Often, I base my words on some words which St Paul wrote to the Christians at Corinth about 1950 years ago: Love is patient; love is kind; love envies no one; love is never boastful, nor conceited, nor rude, nor selfish and not quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs. There are three things that last for ever: faith, hope and love and the greatest of these….. is love. (1 Corinthians 13:4, 5 & 13)
St Paul is actually telling us about God’s love for each and every one of us but we can apply what he says about God’s love to the young couple’s love for each other.
They need to be patient with each other – after all, it’s only natural that we see things from our own point of view and, sometimes, only from our own point of view.
But in every relationship, and especially in a marriage partnership, there has to be some give and take and this takes time and patience to build and, sometimes, it takes a lot of time and a lot of patience. So be patient.
Be kind as well as patient. In any argument, someone has to give way first and you would be doing a great kindness if it was you.
The modern translation which I quoted talks about love not being boastful – in other words not bragging about what you can do or what you’ve got. But in the King James Version of the Bible, it talks about not being puffed up which I thinks has a wider meaning. It includes boasting, of course, but it also includes the pride which is too proud to say sorry. So never be too proud to say you’re sorry and never go to sleep with an argument between you still in the air.
Don’t be selfish – of course it’s very nice to have your own way but we all know how much more pleasure there is in giving rather than receiving
Don’t be quick to take offence – it’s very easy to do but it always causes resentment. And don’t, whatever you do,
keep a tally of the all the things you think your partner has done wrong – and don’t let anyone else do it either.
I’m sure you’ll agree that these words of St Paul’s are so applicable to a married couple. But let’s not forget that he was actually talking about God and his love for all of us. And, if, as they go through life, side by side, the couple have God by their side as well and involve him in everything they do, their marriage will be all the more blessed, all the more happy, all the more secure…. ’til death they do part.
God Bless & Happy Valentines, Henry
Thoughts from the Vicarage…
Happy New Year.
New Year’s Day heralds a new year and a new start for everyone so it is fitting that the Church celebrates a new start for Jesus at the beginning of our year. We celebrated his birth on Christmas Day and the coming of the three kings 12 days later but then we jump 30 years in Jesus’ life and celebrate the day he was baptised by John the Baptist.
Now, to us, Baptism seems like a commonplace event because most of us have been there and done that. But, for a Jew of Jesus’ day, baptism was an unusual event. All those who were born Jews were already of the household of God and their sins were forgiven collectively by ritual the sacrifices at the Temple. But anyone who was not a Jew but wanted to join the Jewish religion had to repent of all their previous sins and wash them away in the waters of baptism.
John the Baptist, however, saw it as his calling to persuade those who were already Jews to take personal responsibility for their own sins, to confess them personally before God and be baptised as an outward sign that they had done so. They did in their thousands and Jesus was among this huge crowd. But, in a flash of inspiration, John realised that Jesus was the one who the prophets tell us about¬ in the Old Testament: he was the Messiah. John knew that he wasn’t worthy to baptise Jesus: in fact, he would have preferred it if Jesus had baptised him, not just with water (as he had been doing) but with the Holy Spirit.
But Jesus knew that baptism was, for him, different from baptism for other people. With both – it’s the sign that a decision has been made to make a fresh start. With other people, the decision is to put all bad things behind them and start a new spiritual life; with Jesus, the decision was to start doing the things that God wanted him to do. And God was very pleased….You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased (Luke 3:22). The pride, the confidence, the belief in Jesus just pours out, doesn’t it?…….. You are my Son……… You are my Son……. You are my Son……. You are my Son whom I love – with you I am well pleased.
It makes all the difference in the world when we know that someone believes in us. It isn’t just that we feel better – we actually do better. I am sure that, when you were at school, it was always the teacher who oozed confidence in you who obtained the best results and it was always the teacher with the long face of pessimism whose class did less well. Go on – you can do it will always achieve more than I don’t suppose you can – but you’ll have to try.
If you have high expectation, high achievement will follow. I once worked with a man who told me that he expected nothing out of life – and he was never disappointed: he never achieved his targets; he was never selected for management and, in the end, he resigned to take a less demanding job. But I once worked under a manager who said that if you aim for the whole world and only achieve half you may be a bit disappointed but you’ll still do well: he became Deputy General Manager of the company.
God the Father certainly believed in Jesus and gave him every encouragement to do his work. God the Father also expected much from Jesus and when Jesus indicated that he was going to live up to this expectation, God said….. You are my Son, whom I love, with you I am well pleased.
When you and I were baptised, God the Father had similar hopes for us, too. He believes in us and He expects much from us. It might sound a bit odd…. God believing in us. After all – we’re supposed to believe in him, aren’t we? But if we accept that God believes in us and does everything to encourage us and we respond to his encouragement and allow it to bear fruit then his will will be done and we will be in perfect union with him.
Baptism is the sign of God’s gift of grace to us; God’s confidence in us; God’s belief that we will do his will. The bread and wine at a Communion service is the sign of his continuing gift of grace to us; his continuing confidence in us; his continuing belief that we will do his will.
And I pray that you will live up to his expectations
God Bless,
Henry
Services for Today
8:00 am Holy Communion # WF
9:15 am Parish Communion # MB
11:00 am Morning Service # WF
11:00 am Parish Communion # LH
Benefice Patronal Songs of Praise 6:30 pm Lt Horkesley
Next Sunday
9:15 am Family Communion MB
11:00 am Parish Communion # WF
11:00 am Morning Service # LH
6:30 pm Evening Service # LH
# 1662
Please pray for……
The soul of John Copsey (funeral at LH 1:30 pm Wed 25th Jan)
& Imogen Strathern to be baptised on 5th February at WF
& Jemima Rutland to be baptised on 18th March at WF
& Esme Barrett, Ellen Brabrook, Claire Chate, John Copsey, John Hennessy, Les Ridge, Georgie Skinner, Peter Thompson, Rosie Thompson
& others who have asked for our prayers
LH PCC meeting at the Vicarage – 24th January
MB FF meeting at Mt Bures Hall – 31st January
LH Patronal Festival….
Benefice Songs of Praise Service 6:30 this evening
They support benefice services at your church – so please support them
MB Quiz Night….
Friday 24th February at The Thatchers’ Arms
Friends of St Andrew’s concert….
Easy listening music & light supper
Saturday 25th February at 7:30 pm
Tickets £8.50 from Carol Bird (01787-227889) & Shop
Lent Course….
Handing on the Torch – Sacred words for a secular society
to be held at the Vicarage at 7:30 pm on Mondays
27th February, 5th, 12th 19th & 26th March
Friends of St Andrew’s art exhibition….
Great paintings on view and to buy – 5th/6th/7th May
For more information about anything in this Bulletin contact the Vicar
Items for inclusion in next weeks BENEFICE BULLETIN by Friday please
Vicar: The Rev’d Henry Heath, Wormingford Vicarage CO6 3AZ
01 787 227398 email:vicar@wormingford.com
See your parish website:
www.wormingford.com, www.littlehorkesley.com or www.mountbures.com
Confinement can often bring inspiration, says Ronald Blythe
I AM reading Montaigne. My ivory tower is a square Tudor room that stares east. Low-ceilinged, clogged with books, it is where I am happiest. The spring-in-winter days breed roses. They look through the window. I look out at the steep hill. The quietness rather than the silence is a kind of bliss. The white cat has to be lifted off papers.
Epiphany is both within and abroad. Poor Paul is involuntarily encased in another room, one with little light. Writing to the Ephesians, he tells them that he has broken through the limits of his Jewish faith in order to “preach the unsearchable riches of Christ to the Gentiles”. Had Paul not been locked up, he would have done this in some Roman theatre or marketplace, not in letters. Bunyan would not have written had they let him preach. We find ourselves in small rooms.
And there are these once-a-year venues, the New Year’s party rooms in the surrounding villages where we steer our way through the people we meet most weeks to those we meet annually. Logs blaze, small children find their way through a forest of legs, dogs are not too pleased, and, although it is almost warm enough to sit on the terrace, we hug glasses of mulled wine.
Driving home in his car, the Colonel repeats how fortunate we are to live here among true friends, and I am a boy again on my bike. Or a youthful historian, searching out the 1630s, when John Winthrop took a shipload of East Anglians to Massachusetts via these very same lanes.
Their luggage included feather beds and seed corn. The latter, not being clean, brought our wildflowers to New England. But here are their abandoned farm¬houses and wool-weaving villages, still standing in unlikely perfection among the empty onion and sugar-beet fields, the low wheat, the gaunt January trees, and in the yellow afternoon light.
When I take matins in one of their abandoned churches, we sing Reginald Heber’s “Brightest and best of the sons of the morning”. This lovely Epiphany hymn was written in one of the Bishop’s children’s exercise books. To his wonderment, he heard it sung on St Stephen’s Day in Meerut, in India.
He wrote: “It is a remarkable thing, that one of the earliest, the largest, and handsomest churches in India, as well as one of the best organs, should be found in so remote a situation, and in sight of the Himalaya mountains.”
I preached on the youthful Buddha, as well as Christ “going forth”. And, although January, there was this April light and softness, and no doubt a sea of snowdrops in the wood below the churchyard. We should have looked. At the service, a walker with his backpack and stick beside him in the pew, and now on his way.
Roger and I had Sunday lunch in our pub: roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, beer. Comfort. But the worship haunted us, the Epiphany language, the singing. “Richer by far is the heart’s adoration.” Heber had been thinking of the Olney hymns when he wrote his own. India got into them.
There are degrees of daylight, just as there are degrees of enlightenment. Think about them all, I say. They are journeys. The word “journey” comes from “as far as one can walk in a day”. Seagulls have arrived inland. They fly low, searching, screeching, their whiteness turning black
Services for Today
9:15 am Family Communion MB
11:00 am Family Communion WF
11:00 am Morning Service # LH
6:30 pm Evening Service
+ Holy Ccommunion # LH
# = 1662
Next Sunday
8:00 am Holy Communion # WF
9:15 am Parish Communion # MB
11:00 am Morning Service # WF
11:00 am Parish Communion # LH
Benefice Patronal Songs of Praise 6:30 pm Lt Horkesley
Your coming in and going out ……
Almighty God, in Christ you make all things new:
transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace
(Collect)
Please pray for……
The soul of John Copsey (funeral at LH 1:30 pm Wed 25th Jan)
& Imogen Strathern to be baptised on 5th February at WF
& Jemima Rutland to be baptised on 18th March at WF
& Esme Barrett, Ellen Brabrook, Claire Chate, John Copsey, John Hennessy, Les Ridge, Peter Thompson, Rosie Thompson
& others who have asked for our prayers
LH Magazines….
2012 donations are now due (£6 or £10 if delivered)
Next PCC meetings at the Vicarage….
WF 7:30 pm Monday 16th January
LH 7:30 pm Tuesday 24th January
A Flower Festival meeting has also been arranged
at MB Hall at 7:45 pm on 31st January
LH Patronal Festival….
Benefice Songs of Praise Service
6:30 pm Sunday 22nd January
They support benefice services at your church – so please support them
Friends of St Andrew’s concert….
Easy listening music & light supper
Saturday 25th February at 7:30 pm
Tickets £8.50 from Carol Bird (01787-227889) & Shop
Lent Course….
Handing on the Torch
Sacred words for a secular society
to be held at the Vicarage at 7:30 pm on Mondays
27th February, 5th, 12th 19th & 26th March
For more inform anything in this Bulletin contact the Vicar
Items for inclusion in next weeks BENEFICE BULLETIN by Friday please
Vicar: The Rev’d Henry Heath, Wormingford Vicarage CO6 3AZ
01 787 227398 email:vicar@wormingford.com
See your parish website:
www.wormingford.com, www.littlehorkesley.com or www.mountbures.com
Ronald Blythe passes on some guidance about prayer
JOACHIM, the Jewish doctor from the Berlin synagogue, kindly drives me to the Midnight, and is transfixed by Wormingford Church, a medieval stone lantern whose fretted brilliance glitters over the parked cars.
Back at the old farmhouse, his Hanukkah candles will waver in the window as part of the Festival of Lights, which celebrates the rededication of the Temple by Judas Maccabaeus in 165 BC. Every morning, Joachim goes up to his room and prays for one hour, facing east. Prayer is an art that has to be practised. “Let us pray,” I quietly invite the congregation. I read wonderful words.
Now, on New Year’s Eve, the guests gone, I find a pearl of candle wax on the windowsill, and leave it there. Jews would seem to be more obedi¬ent to Christ’s prayer-rules than his own followers. This is how Canon Andrew Linzey sums up these rules, in his little book The Sayings of Jesus. I often read them, and if I obey them in some measure that falls short of Joachim’s whole hour of daily prayer, it is because my writer’s mind tends to fly about, alighting on this and that, like one of my August dragonflies from the pond. Anyway, this is what Andrew says.
“Jesus gives little advice about prayer except that it should be unhypocritical, devoid of empty phrases, and preferably done in secret (Matthew 6.1-8; Mark 12.38, 40). The public prayers and self-regarding rituals of the scribes and Pharisees are treated with scorn (Matthew 6.16-18). The prayer recommended by Jesus is simple and almost entirely petitionary in character (Matthew 6.9-13). His own prayer takes place before or after public ministry; he withdraws to pray and almost always prays alone. In John’s Gospel, he prays that his disciples may be kept in the truth, protected from evil, and ‘may all be one . . . so that the world may believe’.”
Prayer, for Teilhard de Chardin, was “to lose oneself in the unfathomable” — he was talking of adoration. For George Herbert, it was the best kind of conversation he could find on earth. Sickly, tramping to Salisbury Cathedral through the water-meadows, or mounted on his horse on the heights of Wiltshire, he would pray, or rather talk:
Come, my Light, my Feast, my Strength;
Such a Light as shows a Feast,
Such a Feast as mends in length,
Such a Strength as makes his guest.
Having broken through prayer into conversation with Christ, Herbert was already half in heaven — as slow-dying people often are — and he could not thank prayer enough for giving him such carefree access. So he wrote his happy extravaganza, which is a kind of Jacobean court eulogy addressed to the highest favour that can be awarded to a subject.
Witty, over the top, bursting with gratitude for its giving him such divine access to “my Friend”, he can be playful and profound all at once. “Of what an easie quick Access, My blessed Lord art thou!” And then — the famous fun. What is prayer?
It is:
Church-bels beyond the starrs heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices; something understood.
Services for Today
8:00 am Holy Communion # WF
9:15 am Parish Communion # MB
11:00 am Morning Service # WF
11:00 am Epiphany Famil Service LH
6:30 pm Evening Service # LH
Next Sunday
9:15 am Family Communion MB
11:00 am Family Communion WF
11:00 am Morning Service # LH
6:30 pm Evening Service # LH
# = 1662
Your coming in and going out ……
Through the church
the manifold wisdom of God should be made known,
according to his eternal purpose
which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord.
In him and through faith in him
we may approach God with freedom and confidence
(Ephesians 3:10-12)
Please pray for……
The soul of John Copsey
(funeral at Little Horkesley at 1:30 pm on Wednesday 25th January)
& Imogen Strathern to be baptised on 5th February at WF
& Jemima Rutland to be baptised on 18th March at WF
& Esme Barrett, Ellen Brabrook, Claire Chate, John Copsey, John Hennessy, Les Ridge, Peter Thompson, Rosie Thompson
& others who have asked for our prayers
LH Magazines….
2012 donations are now due (£6 or £10 if delivered)
Next PCC meetings at the Vicarage….
MB 7:30 pm Tuesday 10th January
WF 7:30 pm Monday 16th January
LH 7:30 pm Tuesday 24th January
LH Patronal Festival….
Benefice Songs of Praise Service
6:30 pm Sunday 22nd January
Friends of St Andrew’s concert….
Easy listening music & light supper
Saturday 25th February at 7:30 pm
Tickets £8.50 from Carol Bird (01787-227889) & Shop
Lent Course….
Handing on the Torch
Sacred words for a secular society
to be held at the Vicarage at 7:30 pm on Mondays
27th February, 5th, 12th 19th & 26th March
For more inform anything in this Bulletin contact the Vicar
Items for inclusion in next weeks BENEFICE BULLETIN by Friday please
Vicar: The Rev’d Henry Heath, Wormingford Vicarage CO6 3AZ
01 787 227398 email:vicar@wormingford.com
See your parish website:
www.wormingford.com, www.littlehorkesley.com or www.mountbures.com
Ronald Blythe praises church music and faithful choir-singers
THE tremendous Scottish gale is “noises off” as I write. It is roaring over Leargan, where we have sat, read, talked, and rested many a summer. It will be hooting down its chimneys, crashing through the plantations, and bringing down deadwood in piles. Here, at Bottengoms, it is but the faintest tail-end of its strength. Just enough wind to bowl the oak leaves over the grass.
Picking up the post from our fine new box in the orchard — to save Jamie’s steps — I see primroses in flower. Not that this braggadocio on their part will stop the winter. It is mild and rough. Rooks blow about, ditchwater gathers strength. The white cat is a cosy breathing ball in the old dairy where the lawnmower lives. “Call me in April.”
The funeral of an old choir-friend in a full church. I hear her singing voice as I say a prayer about her and music. Everywhere, these faithful singers, and at all times. Dear souls who know their Merbecke from their Advent anthems, who ring bells, robe, hold the worship together. What a space she leaves, what a silence.
Earlier this month, we celebrated the feast of St Ambrose, the singing Bishop of Milan. A fourth-century judge, he was offered his see before he had been baptised. Didn’t George Herbert go to Bemerton before he was wholly in holy orders? Another singer, if you like. But it was Bishop Ambrose who demanded congregational singing, not just choir singing. The Church itself must lift up its voice, as in Songs of Praise.
Sometimes, watching the latter, and all this complex religious doctrine set to music, I do wonder what is happening. Probably no more than the blissful act of singing itself. The youthful TV choirmaster goes to schools where boys and girls have never sung. How strange this is, and how have educationists allowed this to happen? Huge establishments without a song? Ambrose would have been nonplussed. I am nonplussed.
I hear the enviable voice of a schoolfriend in the great Suffolk wool church soaring in the solo, our Welsh rector with his head aslant in professional appreciation. The Early Church sang Ambrose’s Splendor paternae gloriae — “O Jesus, Lord of heavenly grace” — every Monday morning, it is said.
Ambrose is the father of church music in Latin Christianity. Lost at the Reformation, it was discovered again by the Victorian translators.
St Augustine listened to Ambrose’s hymns: “How greatly did I weep in thy hymns and canticles, deeply moved by the voices of your sweet-speaking church.”
They said that Ambrose had a style that was peculiar to himself, clear, sweet, vigorous, grand . . . without glitter, but bright and calm, severe yet enthusiastic. Arians — a sect who denied the divinity of Christ — accused Ambrose of bewitching Christians with his music.
I am easily seduced by church music, now and then losing my place when I am taking the service and coming to with a jolt. Last Sunday, the whole of matins tumbled out of my Prayer Book on to the floor, and had to be taped back in as soon as I returned home.
And now for Nine Lessons and Carols, begun at Truro, Ambrosianly raised to the heights at Cambridge. But sung pretty well by us at Wormingford.
