Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 November 2005 12:49:05
Well, Enquirers, anyway, I'm not at the Novice stage yet.
So, it was my second Lay Dominicans meeting on Sunday. We meet once a month, but I'd missed October's meeting because my friend Zoë had just been diagnosed with cervical cancer, and champagne and sympathy (and falling asleep on the sofa, sorry about that) seemed more important, really. For those inclined to offer prayers, she has major surgery on 18th November.
The Silverlink North London Line train creaked its way round north London whilst I prayed the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer for the dead, it being Remembrance Sunday. The Priory Church of St Dominic is near Hampstead Heath, and Gospel Oak is the handiest train station. I got there just before 12, and assumed that the afternoon would follow the format of the meeting I went to in September - Mass in the church, then the meeting starts with Afternoon Prayer from the Divine Office, lunch, Formation for the Novices and enquirers whilst the professed members have a business meeting, then discussion on the Mass readings for that day, Evening Prayer, and wending our separate ways homeward.
What I hadn't realised was that the September meeting didn't happen the way the meetings normally happen, because we didn't have a Chaplain at the time of the September meeting. And because I hadn't been at the October meeting, I didn't know this.
Oh dear.
So whilst I was in church, bowing, kneeling, and crossing my way through Mass, the other Lay Dominicans were in the Parish Hall, praying Afternoon Prayer, eating lunch, having Formation and business meeting, and an introduction from our new Chaplain. I finally twigged that something wasn't quite right when I looked round during the Peace and realised that I couldn't see a single vaguely familiar face anywhere in the church.
Ahem.
So, I can't tell you about the Formation for the novices and enquirers, because I wasn't there. But we had a very interesting discussion about the first reading and the Gospel for the 33rd Sunday of the Year (Year A), which were Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31 and Matthew 25:14-30. And we have a new Chaplain, who is a member of the Dominican Priory that the church is attached to. And I got to go to Mass twice (see my halo. See it shine), because the normal course of the afternoons is: Afternoon Prayer, lunch, Formation for the Novices and enquirers whilst the professed members have a business meeting, then discussion on the Mass readings for that day, Evening Prayer, walk to the church for Mass led by the Chaplain, process to the Lady Altar whilst singing the Salve Regina*, a final blessing, and then we wend our separate ways homeward.
Because the church is huge, and there are only 15 members of the group, we sat in the Choir for Mass, so I had an amazing view of the High Altar, which is covered in mosaics of various Dominican Saints and Blesseds, and surmounted by carvings of angels. I was amused to see that one of the angels is swinging a thurible (metal basket on chains that incense is burned in), and has what can only be described as an unholy grin on its face.
In other, I-am-essentially-vain-and-shallow news, I've been getting lots of compliments on my new, shorter haircut. I think I'll keep it. And if this weather gets much colder, I'm going to have to find the hat I knitted last winter - the wind that whistles round our office block is vicious at the best of times, and it seems to have an extra edge of malice to it at the moment.
* Hail Holy Queen, in Latin.