We began our celebrations with a Vigil Mass on Thursday. Fr Massie is on holiday at the moment so Fr Stephen Maughan said the mass and gave an excellent homily with many interesting connections between the Old and New Testaments regarding Mary, the Ark of the Covenant etc. He also sang the Sanctus (in latin) and he sang most (if not all) of the Eucharistic Prayer (in English).

It all fits in rather well with my own rather generous interpretation of Sacrosanctum Concilium which doesn't say "chuck the Latin, use English" but instead says the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin and then But since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended. and then steps should be taken so that the faithful may also be able to say or to sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to them.

If anybody wants to take those steps, so that we may also be able to say or sing together in Latin those parts of the Ordinary of the Mass which pertain to us, we are very much interested. It would be brilliant if Fr William were to invite Fr Stephen to come around one Saturday afternoon and help him put on some kind of latin chant workshop at St Josephs. The Second Vatican Council says that 'steps should be taken' and the fact that fourty years on steps have not been taken brings the phrase 'silence of dissent' to mind once again.

Anyways... feast of the assumption. Leona walked pretty much all the way home from mass. We carried her over roads (too dangerous) and it was game over when we passed the cake shop... she just stands and stares at it until we pick her up and carry her away. Speaking of cakes, we celebrated the actual feast of the assumption with a blue Mary cake. We've taken Joanna Bogle's trinity cake idea and ran with it, freestyle...

Ella wanted the cake to literally be blue, so she put blue food colouring in the cake mix. Alas, cakes are not white, but yellow. So when you put blue food colouring in they come out green...

If anybody knows how to make a cake be blue then let us know... I expect the answer is to triple the dose of food colouring. Having said that, we need to start being careful about the chemical content of our cakes. Somebody is turning in to a cake junkie...

Hopefully she'll sleep it off. All in all we've had a good Feast of the Assumption. On Sunday there's a Pilgrimage to Mount Grace. I hope we can go... but it depends on me getting lots of stuff done on Saturday... so we'll see.