“If Quires Of Angels Did Rejoice…”

by John M. Joyce (September 2012)

Not this year, however! This year summer has brought endless wet and flooding, cold evenings and even colder mornings. Threatening skies bring deluge after deluge and many crops lie rotting in flooded fields. Gardens are sodden, roads are flooded and impassable, quiet brooks are raging torrents threatening their willow encrusted banks with destruction, ancient bridges that have stood for centuries are being reduced to useless rubble by bloated rivers that lie across the land like spreadeagled, comatose drunks. My little village at the heart of my large rural parish has escaped unscathed, but only by virtue of having had to renew its flood defences due to a disaster a few years ago¹.

Howsomeever, I will remember this years inspection for evermore. Let me tell you why.

With that he turned away and made to walk down the decani aisle as if to leave by the south door. I rushed across to him and grabbed his arm. I startled him and he looked at me as if I was mad.

Apparently, as I was saying the Eucharist in honour of the Mother of G-d he was overcome with an overwhelming urge to go through the door to the organ loft and up the stairs, so he did just that.

Needless to say, after Arion left me yesterday I climbed the stairs to the strange little window and looked at the statues of the Angels. Brandishing his quill and parchment Metatron still smiles at me. Sandalphon still, to me, looks as if he is frowning over some wrong note that his invisible choir has just sung, but of the anger that I used to detect in him, of the sternness that I thought I saw there, there is not a trace left.

Maybe one day I will see what Blair saw and what Arion, miraculously, sees.

Footnotes:

here.

here.

 The Institute of Clerks of Works and Construction Inspectorate of Great Britain Inc.

Wikipedia here.

here for a history of Renatus Harris.

Outside the Pascal (Easter) Season:

            Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His passion and cross be brought to            the glory of His resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord.
            R. Amen.

In the Pascal Season the Regina Caeli is said:

            R. Because the Lord is truly risen, alleluia.

In Latin the prayers are as follows and it is plainly obvious that they take their names from their respective incipits (initial words):

Per annum:

      Amen.

            Gratiam tuam, quaesumus, Domine, mentibus nostris infunde; ut qui, Angelo nuntiante,    Christi Filii tui incarnationem cognovimus, per passionem eius et crucem, ad resurrectionis gloriam         perducamur. Per eundem Christum Dominum nostrum.
            R. Amen.

Tempore Paschali:

Gaude et laetare, Virgo Maria, Alleluia,
            R. Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.

Ave Maria  (the 'Hail Mary') inscribed upon them, hence their other names in the common parlance: the Ave bell or the Ave Maria bell.

here.

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