It fascinates me to see the pattern of parking on Cathedral Green. Many of those who park here are teachers in the three schools in the Ministry Area. This means by 7:30 am in term time most of the parking is taken.
It is a particular hobby horse of mine that most weekday services in churches are timed so that only retired people can attend. When I was a Head teacher many of my collegaues would be in school before or by 7:30am and nearly all by 8am. By the evening most working people are exhausted or busy. Providing early morning worship is one way of serving the spiritual needs of working people. When I was at St Andrew, Earlsfield in south-west London I celebrated Mass daily at 6:15am. I never celebrated alone. Medics at St George’s, Tooting would come along from the station on their way to work, members of the congregation would come occasionally. Mass took just 15 minutes.
Here, in Llandaff people often comment on the difficulty of our physical position, we are tucked away below an escarpment out of the city centre. But in fact we are passed by hundreds of people every day. Dog walkers on their way to the Taff. Students at the Metropolitan University, joggers, walkers and those who can’t sleep. Opening the west doors at 6am I know that every single day visitors and newcomers will come in, hundreds of others will look in and see us. This is why we celebrate the 8am Mass at the nave altar. We are making a strong statement. We can be seen by everyone who passes. We are saying that this is sacred space. Whether we are four people or nine people we claim this space for God.
But 8am is quite late. So at 7am on my working days I celebrate Mass at the Teilo altar, where St Teilo’s skull is enshrined.
I love this Mass. There are the regulars, all of them are what I would describe as natural contemplatives. They come early and sit around the cathedral, we gather at 7am; then there are the random: nurses on their way home from a night shift, young men who have been clubbing, the bereft and the anguished looking for any sort of refuge, the curious among the joggers and walkers.
Fifteen minutes is all it takes, I am careful to give people space to leave without talking. Who needs chit chat at 7am? I stand oustide the south east door at the end of Mass, and the people make their choice.
The rite we use, from the liturgies of the Church in Wales is simple. I use as much Welsh as I think appropriate for the congregation. We use Eucharistic Prayer 1 in the Welsh rite daily. It includes the offertory prayers so saves on time. I rather like Eucharistic Prayers ending in the Sanctus despite the scholarship suggesting that it probably never happened.
I love this early Mass, and the people who come. It is the very best start to the day.
St Teilo looks on us from his reliquary. It is good that he is praying for us and for all who receive the Eucharist in this holy place.
Source: Llyfr Gweddi Bach, A Simple Prayer Book, the Catholic Truth Society
The repetition of the Rosary is great for learning Welsh prayers by heart. Here are the headings and prayers. I would like to produce a version with short Scripture texts in Welsh for each mystery and will work on that. Meanwhile please let me know any typos/mistakes, and, indeed, if you find this useful say a prayer for me.
Llandaff Cathedral – Evensong – Installation as Dean
Fr Richard Peers SMMS
Mother Jan, Canon Chancellor, Fr Richard, Dean, Fr Mark Preece, Canon Precentor (Sub Dean nominate)
Yn enw’r Tad,
a’r Mab,
a’r Ysbrd Glân.
Amen.
“Together we tell a joyful story, grow the kingdom of God and build our capacity for good.”
(Diocese of Llandaff vision, words from te introduction to the installation)
It was late summer 1993. John Major was Prime Minister. I had been ordained deacon just a few weeks and was serving as a curate in Middlesbrough, about as far east as it’s possible to go in the north of England.
I can’t remember when I first heard it but some time that September the Pet Shop Boys released their single Go West.
Well, it has taken me nearly three decades but finally I have come west. And I am very glad to be here.
Go West is a happy song. It is just one word from it that I want to begin with today. If you remember, as well as the lyrics of the verses there is a refrain leading into each line, one simple but profound word: Together.
Pause
This is a sermon of four words and three songs.
I’ve been a teacher all my life so I shall be testing you afterwards.
Together.
It is not good for us to be alone. Right at the beginning of the bible (hold up bible) in Genesis God makes this clear.
The Bible is the story of our not alone-ness. God wants us, you and me, every one of us here to belong.
To be together.
Over the coming years you will hear me use two words a lot:
Your Cathedral.
And the most important word is Your.
Yours if you are a regular worshipper here.
Yours if you are part of the diocese of Llandaff.
Yours if you live in this city, this diocese.
Yours if you live in Wales and this is your national cathedral.
Yours to the people who are, perhaps, mostly not here today. Our politicians and business leaders. Our artists and poets. Christians in other churches. Members of other faiths. People of no religious faith.
Together.
Together I hope for three things for Llandaff Cathedral.
First of all, and underlying everything we do is that this is a place of prayer.
On this site where prayer has been lived for almost 1500 years.
Prayer is my second word for us today.
This beautiful building is here for prayer.
Friends, in this diocese, we will pray for you.
Yes, the cycle of prayer, but please tell us when you have something you want us to pray about.
There is no amount of communication that is too much. Please keep in touch with us.
From Monday next week, the 28th November Fr Mark, Mother Jan and I will be celebrating Morning Prayer and Eucharist Monday to Saturday at 8am. We will be glad to see you. Pop in on your way into the city; make a commitment to come on a day each month or join us regularly as we pray for the city, the diocese, the nation.
A special word to my sister and brother priests in this diocese, there is a strange phrase that goes around about Deans as ‘Senior Priests’ of the diocese.
Given today’s second reading that is not a phrase I am particularly fond of. But I think the role of a Dean is clear. It is my job to love you;
not just my job
but my joy.
In our prayer here we are holding you up in your ministries, the ministry of all the baptised.
My favourite definition of love is Simone Weil’s:
to love is to pay attention to.
Dear sisters and brothers I will pay attention to you.
Come and join us at our prayers here, at your Cathedral, come and have a coffee with us afterwards.
You have a home here.
Prayer is a churchy word for a simple thing, to be in relationship with Jesus.
The first reading we have just heard is my favourite in the Bible. Isaac is walking in the cool of the evening, the RSV translation has it that he is meditating in the cool of the evening. He is praying.
This passage is the only place in the Bible where someone falls in love.
To pray is to be in love with Jesus.
To see him and know him.
To pray is not difficult or strange, it is normal life, it is all of the most intense moments of our life, to fall in love, to give birth, to make friends, to do anything that is more than we are.
To be bigger than ourselves.
To pray is to recognise that it is in all our loving, as husbands, wives, friends, parents, brothers, sisters, that God makes himself known to us.
My next word is beauty.
When I was a Head teacher in Lewisham we adapted words of St Augustine of Hippo as our school motto.
– God is beauty. Deus Pulchritudinis.
This is a beautiful building. The music is beautiful, the worship here is beautiful. I watched every moment of the recent royal visit here. It was breathtaking and flawless.
When we see beauty we see God.
My hope, my prayer is that this cathedral will be a place where the visual arts will find a home. Not the art of the past, as important as that is, but the art of now. The ways in which we make sense of the present.
My final word for the ministry of this cathedral is space.
Life is busy. The world is busy.
We need space, we need spaciousness.
A cathedral is not just a bigger church.
A cathedral is a public space.
My ministry as Dean will be to create a space for all faiths, a space for politicians, a space where we meet, where we talk, where we listen.
This is not the first time I have spoken in this Cathedral.
In 2019 I spoke here about the hymn we will sing in a few moments.
The hymn known as Gwahoddiad. The welcome. The invitation.
It is a wonderful hymn because it is Jesus-centred and utterly evangelical.
Yr Jesu, to Jesus, Jesus welcomes, Jesus invites.
Mi glywaf dyner lais,
Yn galw arnaf vi.
I love those lines. We are the ones who have heard the tender voice, calling us to baptism, to ordination, to christian living.
And we are called to enable others to hear that tender voice. They will do so when we talk about Jesus without embarrassment.
When we model for all believers a natural, unforced evangelism to the 97% who don’t go to church, who have not heard that voice.
Four words and three songs.
Together
Prayer
Beauty
Space
Go West
Gwahoddiad
My final song, the B side – do you remember those – of Go West. A song called Shameless.
As your Dean, I will be shameless.
May we all be shameless in talking about our friend Jesus, may we be shameless in gwahoddiad, inviting our sisters and brothers to a space where justice reigns, where we meet in peace, where we share in prayer, beauty and space.
UPDATE 24 08 19Many thanks for comments on the pointing etc. Here are updated forms of Compline, a setting of the Lord’s Prayer to Rimsky-Korsakov (based on that in Emynau Catholig) and the Conclusion to the Office. All in PDF format.Cwmplin
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Spending my teenage years just outside of Reading my first experience of the Daily Office was sung Evensong at St Nicholas, Sulham and the sung Office of the monks at Douai Abbey. I was surprised to discover that the Office could be said. These days next to my prayer desk as well as the usual books I keep the music and texts for singing the Office in French and German (Chanter l’Office and Antiphonale zum Stundengebet). I have enough of both languages (and knowledge of the liturgy) to be able to use them now and again and there is something about praying in another language that keeps the attention at 100%.
Last week I was in the Bangor diocese and glad to share in worship partly in Welsh. I am a failed Welsh-learner having made three or four attempts over the last twenty years or so, mainly in order to be able to read Welsh poetry, but latterly as more priests in Wales have joined the Sodality. (A personal hero, A.M. Allchin, is reputed to have learnt Welsh in a year …). I particularly enjoyed singing Tell Out My Soul in Welsh (O f’enaid, cân, mawrha yr Arglwydd Dduw) and last year I was at a beautiful dawn Vigil on Easter day and enjoyed singing Taizé chants in Welsh. Some of those chants are in the Welsh Methodist Hymnal Caneuon Ffyddwhich I have and is excellent.
I’ve been searching for resources to sing the Office in Welsh so I can get it by heart and it seems that there are very few (I am happy to be corrected!). My friend and Associate of the Sodality, Fr Dylan Parry Jones, and I have exchanged messages about this and he tells me that Welsh is difficult to use with chant because of the nature of the stress patterns – mainly on the penultimate syllable of words. English too has complicated patterns for stress and many musical or chant purists object to the setting of English to Latin plainchant melodies. I agree that when this is done just by squeezing English words to fit the traditional melodies this can create some very peculiar effects. But in the last half century many musicians have worked to create authentically modal chants for use with English. So, Fr Dylan’s message came as something of a challenge. I thought I would start with Compline.
The opening and concluding verses are set to a simple but memorable psalm tone:
The hymn to the traditional ferial tone for Te lucis:
I am pleased with the antiphon to the psalm (used for all three traditional Compline psalms). The tone and antiphon are in the 8th mode (traditional at Compline). The tone is very simple (from Stanbrook Abbey – apologies, I first claimed to have written it myself!) with just a change of note at the final stressed syllable (so it doesn’t matter whether that is the final or penultimate syllable). The Eastertime triple alleluia is given here as well:
The Responsory is set to the Latin melody and I think works.
The antiphon to the Nunc Dimittis has been much more difficult. The Welsh version in the Church in Wales’ liturgy has 32 words; the English has 25 words and fewer syllables, and the Latin only 15. I tried hard to fit the Welsh text to a repeated pattern of the Latin melody but it really felt very strained. So I have used an English setting by Dom Philip Gaisford at Worth Abbey, repeating sections of the melody and providing another very simple tone:
Oikodomeo 