The Tuesday of Christmas….

Home made Granvadlax Chrsitmas Day

This day has leaping lords but no Saints….so I thought we might all consider those ill made resolutions that come in with the New Year and barely last out the first week of January….

After Epiphany on Friday I’ll give up booze for another month….then repeat the abstinence over Lent. I’ve promised myself to go to Westminster Cathedral every Sunday for Mass…walking there and back. I’ve also promised myself at least one other long walk. That really is no hardship for me because I enjoy walking and it’s great for thinking about my writing projects.

In the church’s liturgy for the rest of the Christmas season the readings are either from St John’s Epistles and or St John’s Gospel. It reminds me on how seriously the theology of Christmas in the Christian Church is almost exclusively Johannine rather than Pauline. Pope Paul VI was obviously making a very serious point when he restructured the liturgy for the new Roman Missal…

It also strikes me now as very odd indeed that, rather like Lyndon Johnson, perhaps the most significant figure of the post war papacy…after John XXIII….is almost airbrushed out of history. There’s no fast track canonisation process for him…although he was the single figure who made or rather re-made the church in the image of the Second Vatican Council…some of his encyclicals are extraordinarily moving and thoughtful…and his last Will and Testament read at his haunting and simple funeral service, instead of a panegyric which he had forbidden, in my opinion was one of the most beautiful and undervalued documents of the post conciliar period.

History will lionize Pope Paul VI in due course as one of the most important figures in the history of the Roman church….

We’ve reached the leaping lords all ten who are meant to symbolise the Ten Commandments…I think they were probably just pranksters playing games of leapfrog in the nave of the church….

Today is a nice quiet day to listen to Messiah….I like the recording with Janet Baker and Paul Esswood…it’s way the best in my very humble opinion and I love the inventive decoration of the singers…

HANDEL. Messiah—complete. Elizabeth Harwood (soprano), Janet Baker (contralto), Paul Esswood (countertenor), Robert Tear (tenor), Raimund Herincx (bass), Axnbrosian Singers, English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Charles Mackerras. HMV

advenTube ro Handel Messiah Hallelujah – YouTube

► 3:59► 3:59
www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bp1nzA7DSc
10 May 2011 – 4 min – Uploaded by lorinrs82
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advenTube ro Handel Messiah Hallelujah … McCarthy, Paul Esswood, Raimund Herincx, Robert Tear …

This at least gives you the jaunty Hallelujah Chorus….