Waiting and Watching...

"Wait here and watch..." This commandment - or rather plea - from our stricken Lord facing the great agony of the loneliness of Gethsemane is one that nuns of Perpetual Adoration never forget or fail.

In the busy heart of London - at Tyburn Convent near Marble Arch - nuns kneel in prayer before the Christ in Communion night and day, day and night, year following year following year in an unbroken chain of devotion.

Well, that's nuns for you. Beat the male monks into so many cocked hoops in this and in so many other matters of sanctity. But even we mob tried to make a go of it for the night of Holy Thursday. From Compline to the following Vigils monks were striped down in a half-hour rotating rota, as it were, to maintain a presence before the Presence.

The darkest hours - from two until four - would be taken on demand by the regular insomniacs. (Quite how you can be an insomniac and a monk all in one lifetime defeats me. Not to have slept the allotted eight hours from nine at night until five the next morning would have broken me, that I know.)

Juniors were forbidden such rigour, though that didn't stop us sneaking down during the night for a spot of illicit prostration. On the whole, all prostration was considered if not illicit then certainly not sufficiently licit to be encouraged. It smacked of a certain over-exuberant enthusiasm and considered potentially spiritually harmful in the long run.

Not my thing at all, I must say, this spread-eagling on the very stone floor, face-down and arms outstretched as if in homage to the very Crucifixion itself. Well, not my thing if you'd have asked me about it. (Not that you did of course, we not having then met!) But that night - the night when Our Lord faced his darkest hours of sorrow - there was a complete compulsion to do what one could to be there with Him and for Him.

So, yes, we juniors were there in silent - and not forbidden yet not encouraged - show of some solidarity. (The trick of the thing - in the complete dark - was not to tread on the outstretched hand of a fellow prostrate. Undignified squeals of pain were so just not the thing!)

And so we did watch and we did wait. And sometimes I do allow myself to be slightly uncharitable to those who never do either:

Question: Who are the Faithful?

Answer: The Faithful are the people of God who assemble every Sunday to hear Mass and to receive communion.

Question: And who are the Faithful Departed?

Answer: The Faithful Departed are the same people of God, some thirty seconds after the end of Mass exiting the Church in a mighty roar as if unable to get out of the place quick enough!

...Extract from my version of the Catechism I fear!