Good Friday in Church and Hospital

Our Holy Week liturgies are going well. Earlier today I celebrated the Commemoration of the Passion and Death of Our Lord at Christ the King with about 350 people. As I have done now for many years off and on, I read the Passion on my own. I think that today, of all days, we can afford to develop the liturgy. Nobody is in a rush, people are there because they want to be. The servers and choir were excellent. At the Veneration of the Cross I am always touched by the two extreme age-groups - the little children and the elderly - kissing the Cross of Our Lord.

After we both got back home, Fr James and I went to visit a Polish priest friend of ours, Fr Gregory Matus, parish priest of Bargoed and Abercynon. He has had a serious operation in the Heath for lung cancer brought on by working with asbestos in his earlier days. When they opened him, they decided to remove most if not all of his lung, so he is now "running on one cylinder", and has to learn a new way of living. Gregory belongs to our Fraternity of Priests, and I felt a great closeness to him in his weakness there on his hospital bed. Indeed, we see the suffering face of Jesus all around us, don't we, if we have eyes to see...