Sunday 8 April 2012

Delectable Enormities, Or, Enough is Not as Good as a Feast


On Wednesday of Holy Week the Bishop of Rome recieved a present of a 551-pound chocolate egg, decorated with the papal arms (full story here, at the Catholic News Service). Was it filled with fondant, with yolk and white? Probably not, but it is very splendid all the same. 

The papal master of ceremonies, however, has missed a trick. Clearly the egg should have been carried into St Peter's this morning on the sedia gestatoria, before - to great fanfare - His Holiness burst out of it at the altar. Next year, perhaps.

Having not much of a sweet tooth, I cannot blame His Holiness for charitably giving this monster egg away, although the mistress of Plumstead Rectory says that if someone were to offer us such an egg (with appropriate coat of arms, of course) she would have a good go at finishing it.

Yet although this egg is far too much for one elderly clergyman, that is surely the point. The God of Easter gives us, not as much as we need, but more than we could ever desire. The table is fully laden: not only need none go hungry, but however much we recieve, there is always more. So even if you are still hung over from the party after the Easter Vigil (ahem) I hope you will be opening another bottle of champagne today. Or the largest possible chocolate egg, if your taste runs that way.

It is your solemn duty to feast. For Christ is risen, and of his fullness we have all recieved grace upon grace.

Happy Easter.

Wednesday 4 April 2012

Take-away and Eat: This is my Body.


We have a branch of Greggs within two hundred yards of Plumstead Rectory, which is more than they can say in Downing Street. In the cause of local loyalty I should add that nearer still is a branch of Greggs' lesser-known Liverpool competitor Sayers, but I am not a regular customer of either establishment, nor (unlike our political class) do I feel the need to pretend to be. Incidentally, if the Prime Minister is reading this in his report from GHQ, we were not fooled.

The products of Greggs and Sayers are not at all to my taste: greasy outside, suspect inside and fundamentally un-nutritious. You can see how the political class might feel an affinity.

Sadly this is one area in which the Church of England, normally so out-of-touch, is thoroughly inculturated.

Monday 2 April 2012

Zombies: the urgent question of modernity.

As any fule kno, Scripture may be interpreted literally, allegorically, morally, anagogically and whimsically. The fifth sense is much underrated, in our view.

On an unrelated note, the thoughts of the Angelic Doctor on the subject of zombies yesterday were right up our street.