We began...

...in the Fitzalan-Howard family chapel at Arundel, where we held a Penitential Service. It is always a solemn feeling to kneel where people have been praying for hundreds and hundreds of years. You understand again what it is to ask for God's mercy and forgiveness, to join with all the other penitents down all the centuries, all so human, all so different and so smiliar...all of us sinners, all needing God's grace...

...and then in due course we processed across the road to the great Cathedral, where Mass was concelebrated....this was an Ordinariate Pilgrimage, marking the Year of Mercy, and we entered through the Cathedral's Mercy Door, which was all wreathed with flowers.

Too cold for a proper picnic: I had packed a big hamper but it was a bit bleak just sitting on a bench outside the Cathedral in a chilly wind putting bits of smoked salmon into rolls... But then there was Benediction, and the Divine Praises... "Blessed be God..." and lovely music...and then a pleasant walk through the town down to the river, and Tea... with toasted tea-cake...and a look at the old Dominican priory, and the Arun rushing by... so on to the train home...glorious views of the Sussex countryside in the evening light...

Late into the evening, I clicked around the internet to get the latest news, and was deeply deflated by reading about the CofE's Synod...there seems to be a complete abandonment of the notion of a revelation from God to the human race.

If the poor CofE  decides to allow ceremonies for two (or three, or whatever number some feel is right)  people of the same sex to go through a form of marriage, it somehow ceases to have a link with the idea that God has any direct interest in the human race at all. He has no plan, no message for us.   Rather, the idea seems to be that the CofE should be an organisation that celebrates how people feel, and makes up ceremonies accordingly. God is just a word used from time to time to make the noise sound right.  But no Word made flesh,no understanding of male and female, of God's union with the human race, of what Cana meant, or the Marriage Feast of the Lamb...so there's the end of it. No amount of noise can fill the gap.

I don't want to sound rude, but it would be nice if they would let the rest of us use some more of the glorious old buildings - which in a sense belong to the whole nation and not just to any one part of it - - so we can worship God in them as the builders intended...