Herzogenrath was a great success

On Saturday morning three small Ordinariate contingents (from France, the Netherlands and Germany) made their way to Herzogenrath near Aachen for a Pontifical Votive Mass of Our Lady of Walsingham, celebrated on the last day of the 15th Cologne Liturgical Conference by Monsignor Keith Newton, our Ordinary. He was accompanied by Fr. James Bradley , now personal secretary to the Ordinary and assistant priest at St. Mary’s, Cadogan Street, London, and Fr. Daniel Lloyd, assistant priest to the Oxford Ordinariate Group.

Fr. James served as Deacon at the Mass and Fr. Daniel as Subdeacon. Being a graduate in German, Fr. Daniel had also translated Mgr. Keith’s homily into German and provided consecutive translation at the ensuing talk given in the Parish Centre.

Our own Fr. Geoffrey from Eindhoven was robed and participated “in choro”. Music for the mass (mainly the Missa “O quam gloriusum” by Luis de Victoria and plainsong from The Graduale) was provided by the superb Cappella Aquensis (“Aachen Choir”), conducted by Thomas Beaujean.

Hopefully a video of the service will be available at some time in the foreseeable future, but it will first be sold as a DVD and then perhaps we will obtain the right to publish it online. Excerpts have been promised on the web and we shall embed these as soon as possible.

The mass itself was very prayerful and quite exquisite. It was celebrated according to Rite I of the Book of Divine Worship, even with the shorter American 1928 BCP version of the Prayer of Humble Access, which I hope will one day be replaced by the full prayer.

It was my first time to experience a BDW eucharist live and the very holy rendering of the prayer texts by Mgr. Newton meant that for me it far outdid any Extraordinary Form mass I have ever experienced. The use of the sacral form of the vernacular reminded me of my adolescence in the Anglican Church and allowed me to prepare myself for reception of Holy Communion and to give thanks afterwards by joining in the public recital of some very beautiful prayers which are missing from a standard Roman Rite mass, whether Ordinary or Extraordinary.  ´

The only thing that I found missing from the mass was some enthusiastic hymn singing by an English-language congregation, but this was almost totally made up for by a resounding and triumphant rendition  of the German Te Deum hymn “Großer Gott, wir loben Dich”, number 257 in the Gotteslob hymn book, during the retiring procession.

Fr. Daniel chanted the epistle and Fr. James chanted the Gospel of the Annunciation (both very proficiently), and this did not fail to make an enormous impression on all present. In his homily Monsignor Keith told the story of the shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, pointing out its specific emphasis on the willingness of Mary to cooperate with God’s will in becoming the Mother of God and on the family and home life of the Holy Family.
He reminded us that Walsingham is known as “England’s Nazareth” and that inasmuch as England returns to Walsingham, Mary returns to England, as Pope Leo XIII prophesied. Here is the full text of the sermon and the German translation.

Unfortunately communion was only administered under one species and on the tongue. Some of us had hoped that the Anglican practice of offering the chalice to the congregation would have been used at this Mass.

After Mass we retired to the Parish Centre, where Monsignor Newton gave a very interesting and humorous talk on the history and the mission of the Ordinariate(s) and in which he lost no opportunity to praise Pope Benedict XVI for promulgating the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus and  to repeatedly thank him for the breadth of his vision for the Church. Following the talk we Ordinariate expats were able to chat with our Ordinary and the two priests, a welcome opportunity for us here in the European diaspora.

(to be continued)