Lent 2 The Transfiguration of our Lord

The Buckfast Group gathered once more for worship at Buckfast Abbey.  This week the Abbey's voluntary choir were leading us and we had a short practice of the psalm response before Mass began.  The hymns were traditional and were very familiar to us: "Forty days and forty nights", "Father most holy, gracious and forgiving", and "Sweet sacrament divine".

As we heard in the gospel reading, it was indeed good to be there - to be at the Mass of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, in this wonderful place hallowed by God and manned by the Benedictine community.  One cannot help but begin to feel the benefits of being in the shadow of the wings of the Catholic Church already.  One is left in no doubt that this is the Church and only now begin to realise that while before one believed in what one was doing, there were doubts, and growing doubts at that.  Here now we have a sense of freedom based on confidence - this is the Church of the Apostles in communion with the successor of he whom Christ named the Rock: Peter.  This doesn't mean the Catholic church is perfect, nor full of saints, but we can be confident that our life lived within it, is able to fully avail itself of the grace Christ intended. And we can be confident of the doctrine of the Church, that it is indeed that which Christ taught His disciples and which the Holy Spirit has continued to reveal to the Church down through the ages.
Deo Gratias.

Ian Hellyer, Buckfast Group Pastor

Postscript:  My sons were very pleased that now there are tadpoles in the pond.  Next week they will be hoping for some legs on the tadpoles: a transformation week by week.