We're fast approaching Holy Week, the most solemn (and my personal favourite) time of the liturgical year. I was going through the St Lawrence Press blog archives earlier and was pleased to find this gem. I remember reading it at the time and having a rather ineffable feeling of mingled ''nostalgia'' (that is if one not old enough to actually remember something can feel nostalgia) and wrath, since Liturgy-wise things have declined at Westminster so magnificently (the New Rite is as far removed from Liturgy as a block of flats is from the Sainte-Chapelle, the most beautiful church in Christendom); although the choir there are second to none. Were this the order of Holy Week at Westminster Cathedral this year, I think I would camp outside for the week! See here for a 1962 comparison (try not to punch something).
Pontifical Mattins and Lauds of Easter Sunday must have been superb. An old friend of mine (with whom I have sadly lost touch), a Russian Orthodox, had a bargain (I suppose similar to the bargain made between Legolas and Gimli) at one time. We agreed to visit each other's churches for the duration of Holy Week, to experience for the first time one anothers' different and venerable Liturgies. Nothing came of it, alas, because I informed him that the church he had in mind (not my parish church, but a church I go to often enough) did not observe the Traditional Liturgy for Holy Week (or indeed at any other time of the year)...
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