My dear sister Agatha had always said I could burn water, but she was wrong. I’d just proved it. Too bad that she never lived to see my success. I’d raided her herbal tea remedy for sleeplessness and was sipping a brew that reminded me of damp autumnal bonfires. She had reserved this particular concoction for insomnia. She always swore by it. “Drink it, Ambrose”, she would tell me. “It won’t kill you.”
She was right, as she often was. It didn’t kill me, and it didn’t kill her. A heart attack had done that only a fortnight previously. How I missed her. She was so practical about things. I am not. We complemented each other well. Over the years, we had been a good team in the parishes where I served as a Priest.
Having finished the tea, I went to bed and settled down for the remainder of the night. However, I still couldn’t sleep. I kept turning over in my mind my last few hours with dear Agatha.
That night we had been enjoying a cup of cocoa in the living room of our large Vicarage. Agatha was reading to me various bits and pieces from “The Word”, the diocesan newspaper. For some reason, Agatha never liked the paper, referring to it as “The Turd” – fit only for cleaning up after sloppy and ill-trained household pets, she said. Once, when the editor of “The Word” sent round a survey, Agatha had diligently returned it with a plea for printing it on more absorbent paper. Nothing changed, though. And Agatha, despite her scorn, still never missed going over the diocesan organ with minute scrutiny every time it was published.
On her last night with me, she snorted at the headline: CRACK COVERED, a reference to the recent local meeting of the national church advocacy group for Catholic Ritual And Carnal Knowledge. After a stormy meeting and a close vote, CRACK had decided to discontinue their advocacy of nude liturgy. “I suppose they have to talk about something, now that they have achieved their main objectives of girls at the altar and boys in bed,” Agatha said. “Better they turn against each other over this than pester and persecute the rest of us with their po-faced silliness and heretical agenda.”
I mumbled assent and there was silence for a moment. “Does the Bishop have anything interesting or challenging to say in this issue of the newspaper?” I asked.
“Interesting? Challenging?” she retorted. “Under the headline: GET WET AND GET WITH IT he goes on at length about ‘leading us all in the exploration of the implications of our Baptism within the context of our loving and caring community’. Blah blah blah. If he’s leading an exploration, they’ll only get lost and perish. Ha! He’s the Captain Scott of theological discovery.”
“Will the Bishop be leading us in this exercise by himself?” I asked.
“Oh no,” Agatha replied. “He’s calling together the Canons of the Cathedral Chapter to assist him. That kiss-arse crew of egotistical know-nothings ought to be a big help, I don’t think. Call it a chapter? It’s hardly a paragraph!”
I sighed. Agatha was so gleeful in her scorn. It couldn’t be good for her soul, I had thought. I waited for her next explosion. It wasn’t long in coming. “Jesus wept! Listen to this, Ambrose,” she said. “The Dean is quoted as saying that from now on they will be referring to all readings from the Old Testament at the Cathedral as ‘readings from the Hebrew Scriptures’. He says that he thinks we must all do this as a friendly concession to the Jewish community in these inter-faith times. What rot!”
“Well, my dear,” I replied, “It would seem to me to be undeniable that the Old Testament is the Holy Book of the Jewish people.”
“Yes, yes,” she agreed, “But it is also our Holy Book. I don’t trust the Dean. In fact, if he told me it was raining, I wouldn’t believe him until the water was up to my neck. There’s a hidden agenda there, Ambrose. You mark my words!”
“Do you really think so?” I asked.
“Absolutely. When was the last time you heard anyone in the Church Establishment take the Old Testament seriously? It’s too full of wrath, righteousness and rules for them. They’re writing it off as old wives’ tales made redundant by the New Testament. If I were a Jew, I’d be insulted by Christian liberals casting off something that they regard as inferior and don’t want anymore.”
“Maybe so,” I said. “It’s unlikely anyway that any Jews would be present at a service in the Cathedral to hear the Dean’s most gracious gesture toward their sensibilities.”
“Quite. It’s just empty posturing. Typically self-effacing without losing any condescension,” Agatha said, turning to the back page and shifting in her chair. “Oh, here’s something of great interest to us all, I’m sure. The Archdeacon has won another golf tournament. The headline is: OUR CHAPLAIN TO THE HANDICAPPED.”
“Good for him,” I said. “He must be very gratified after all the time he spends playing golf.”
Agatha had snorted and then chuckled wickedly, putting the newspaper down. “I suppose winning a golf tournament is something of an achievement for someone who doesn’t know his arse from a hole in the ground.”
At this I had burst into laughter, and laughed even louder when Agatha had appeared to mimic the Archdeacon, with her knuckles hanging down to the floor and her face contorted, with a vacant look. She had the Archdeacon down perfectly. I had kept laughing, and it was some minutes before I realised that she had had a sudden, massive and fatal heart attack.
Now, just two weeks later, there I was, sad and sleepless in my bed. How I missed my sister. The wet bonfire tea wasn’t working. Agatha would have known what to do next. I decided to get up, go to my study and read for awhile. Idly scanning my shelves, my eyes lighted upon a history of the Oxford Movement that I hadn’t looked at since my days long ago in theological college. I began to read.
The Oxford Movement began with a courageous sermon against secularism and indifference in 1833 by John Keble. He attracted a number of friends and supporters, including John Henry Newman, and they began publishing tracts that were widely circulated, recalling the Church to her full Catholic spiritual heritage and encouraging the Church to act boldly. It soon developed into a movement that was not only theological and spiritual, but also aesthetic, liturgical and evangelistic. How brave they were! They needed to be, as they faced all kinds of obstacles from within the structures of the Church and the Nation. Rejected and persecuted by the Political and Church Establishment, heroic Priests and lay people took themselves off to the slums in search of the forgotten, and there the Gospel had prevailed. Chief among those heroes was Fr. Mackonochie of St. Alban’s Holborn. But that was a long time ago.
What had happened? Where did it go wrong? I reflected on my own ministry. I considered myself one of their spiritual heirs, an Anglo-Catholic. Why was I so timid and lacklustre and tame?
I decided to get dressed and go for a walk. I thought that perhaps some modest exercise in the cool night air might clear my head and fatigue me sufficiently to settle me down for a sleep.
It was a lovely starlit night, and all the cooler for its dark and beautiful clarity. I regretted not having put on my heavy cloak over my soutane. At least my biretta prevented the warmth from leaving my body through the top of my head. I decided that a brisk walk through a small park nearby would probably be sufficient. There seemed to be no-one else around.
I was approaching the entrance to the park when a dark figure emerged from behind one of the gate pillars. “Hey! You! Stop right there.”
“Is this a mugging?” I asked. “I’ve never been mugged before. What do I do?”
“Give me your wallet and you won’t get hurt.”
“Hang on a minute,” I said, nervously fumbling through the slit in my robes for my trouser pocket. “Be with you in just a sec. Sorry, but I’m new at this. Have you done many muggings before? I must say, you seem very good at it. Does it pay well?”
“Shut up. Hand it over….. Say, aren’t you a Priest?”
“Well yes”, I said. “I have a biretta.”
“You have a beretta? A handgun? Shit, the Church has really changed since I went to Sunday School!”
“Here it is!” I said. At last having found my wallet, I extracted it from my trouser pocket, but it snagged on the lining of my soutane as my hand came up, presenting the mugger with a bulge under my cassock.
Without another word, the mugger darted back into the shadows and I heard footsteps moving rapidly away. Unaccountably, I felt a sense of inadequacy at my first mugging – the transaction having failed to come to its intended conclusion. Perhaps the poor man would have better luck next time with someone more experienced. What a way to make a living!
I decided to sit for a moment on a park bench, just inside the entrance. I must have dozed off. The tea worked. Good old Agatha. I awoke with a sudden start when I felt someone come to sit beside me. I couldn’t see him clearly, even with the lighting nearby, but I think he must have been my age, although he looked older. He had several layers of tattered clothes on for warmth. There was an old tartan blanket that had seen better days slung over his shoulder. From the look of him, I concluded that he must have been living rough in the park.
“Sorry if I startled you, mate,” he said. “On a long cold night like tonight I thought that maybe you could do with some company and a blanket.” With that, he threw the blanket over our knees. “I don’t suppose you’d have a bottle of something we could share, would you?”
“No, I’m sorry,” I said. “But I do have a large house nearby. Would you like a warm bath and a bed for the night?”
After my guest had had his bath and something warm to eat back at the Vicarage I put him in one of the guest rooms upstairs for the night. Back downstairs I thought to myself that here was someone who might need me almost as much as I had needed Agatha. There must be others like him who need to know that God loves them. I would seek them out. And with that thought, I finally drifted off to sleep in a chair.