Reading the weekly newsletter of All Saints Blackheath, I learned that St Stephen’s Lewisham would be celebrating their patronal festival with a Patronal Mass at 11:00 today. St Stephen’s is the church next to the police station. I often walk past it on my way between Abi’s house and the centre of Lewisham. Until recently, it had been surrounded by scaffolding, and I had never been inside.
Six tall candles on the nave altar, more on the high altar, and sunlight shining through the blue stained glass windows behind. Statues by the pillars: Stephen, of course, holding a stone like one of the ones that killed him, Paul, whose first appearance in Acts is as an onlooker at the martyrdom, and an extraordinarily beautiful Gregory the Great, as well as others I didn’t get a good look at. Four priests concelebrating in scarlet chasubles. Lots of incense. Plenty of carols, beginning with Good King Wenceslas, and Gloria, Sanctus and Agnus Dei with responses enthusiastically sung. Even the taste of an ordinary communion wafer was so different from the chunks of bread roll at St George’s. A sermon about those who suffer and die for their faith. AS the choir sang the Coventry Carol, I couldn’t help thinking of the Holy Innocents, whom we commemorate the day after tomorrow.
Some good conversations over prosecco, including fellow travel-blogger David, and Brett, for whom I had taken a service in Eltham, who in his retirement seeks permission to officiate in Europe.
I walked back through the cold sunshine, along Waterlink Way and the Thames Path.
emeritablog: life after work 