Wednesday 29 July 2009

Silver Jubilee of Fr Timothy Finigan...

I was privileged today to attend (and serve) the Votive High Mass of the Holy Ghost at the parish of Blackfen to mark the 25th year of Fr Timothy Finigan's ordination. Jonathan (the parish Liturgy expert and Master of Ceremonies) and I were the first there (among the Servers) and we arranged the church, Altar, choir stalls etc for the proper and smooth conduct of the elaborate ceremonies that are part of the Church's Traditional Liturgy. The Mass itself was beautiful; the Mass Propers and Ordinary were sung very well by the parish choir and the visiting schola, and the organ accompaniment was played exceptionally well also. Many familiar faces were in choro and in the Congregation, among them Fr John Zuhlsdorf, Fr Ray Blake, Dr Alcuin Reid and a good many other Clergy such as Fr Patrick Hayward, a most worthy priest (who celebrated his Golden Jubilee recently).

After putting the church ''back to normal'' and setting everything up for the New Rite in the morning, we joined the parish for celebrations in the specially set up marquee and parish club. I grabbed a beer from the bar and collapsed in a chair briefly, but then Fr Finigan delivered a well-thought-out and moving speech about his life as a priest. It put things into ''perspective'' (as the saying goes - and my mother often says that I lack perspective) for me in a way; I am often vindictive and very selfish, but Fr Finigan is a man who has devoted himself wholly to his vocation as priest of God and to the service of his parish. I wish him every blessing, both temporal and spiritual, from Our Lady of the Rosary, and pray God that I too may come in the end to some notion of what (if any) vocation I may have.

The day has been altogether wonderful, and shall remain engraved in my memory as one of the chief events of my life (rather like Samwise Gamgee's first impression of the Elves, although others may see that differently). So congratulations Fr Finigan, and may I say this: Sic Hobbitur ad astra! (Thus he is Hobbited to the stars!)

I have found no decent pictures to supplement this post, but I am sure that tomorrow and the next day there will be plenty on other, more famous blogs.

8 comments:

  1. How blessed you are to have been able to serve at Fr Finigan's 25th. I'm glad to hear it went so well.

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  2. Thank you for helping to make Fr Tim's jubilee such a memorable occasion. Do not worry about your vocation - God will reveal it to you in due course. Think how long Bilbo and Frodo breezed through life before being given their quests!

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  3. Many thanks for your kind comment Mary...have I met you in person before? I know several Marys, and I am not generally good at matching names with faces. The day was marvellous. I was very excited about it in the lead up, then the day came and went so quickly, and now things are back to ''normal'' again. As regards Bilbo and Frodo, yes I agree, but I hope I am not in my 50s before God decides to do something useful with me!

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  4. The day sounds wonderful - a real jubilee for priest, and people, his friends.

    You are lucky: having moved back to a very provincial part of Australia after living in larger cities, I but rarely have the chance to attend any decent ecclesiastical functions anymore. Come the weekend, 200 km to Hobart for the only Latin Mass!

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  5. Joshua, many thanks for your comment. It is often the way with life though, that we must forego pleasure for something else. I do appreciate my ''luck'' in living within walking distance of the parish of Blackfen though.

    200 km!? We don't do metric units on this blog! Say rather inches, feet, yards, miles or leagues instead! I don't quite understand metric units (I know that's probably incredible considering my age!) but it sounds like a long way to travel. Good for you, I expect that the religious experience of the Mass is that much more poignant - rather like what Gandalf told the Hobbits in Minas Tirith after Aragorn's coronation about preparing the feast (I am isolated from my copy of The Lord of the Rings at present, so you'll have to look up the passage yourself; I think it is Book VI, ''The Steward and the King,'' though I am not sure.)

    God bless.

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  6. I'll look up the passage you suggest...

    So you're a metric martyr, eh? The changeover to the Revolutionary French units happened here before I was born - but I believe a mile is 5/8 of a kilometre.

    If you prefer, I will be travelling just over 40 leagues - an easy run for Shadowfax!

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  7. Joshua, that's more like it! I did learn metric units at school, but I never got my head around them - plus, my parents don't understand (and never use) metric units; so I have grown up with my parents measuring things in the traditional Imperial measurements.

    In Apostolic times, there was an old pagan maxim that went: Nothing can be both new and true - I concur!

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  8. Joshua! Far from a mile being a whimpy kilometer, a kilometer is a whimpy mile. A kilometer is approximately .6 of a mile.

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