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Catholic Heritage

Before Vespers, Stanbrook Abbey, Worcester

The feast of St Pius X is a good day on which to think about Catholic heritage. The news that the Stanbrook Abbey, Worcester, site has finally been sold has been greeted here with a mixture of joy and sadness: joy that the buildings will no longer stand empty, slowly deteriorating; sadness that a great and beautiful part of our Catholic heritage is now passing into secular hands.

We know as well as any that buildings are not the only, nor even the principal, constituent of any heritage; but it is silly to pretend that they don't matter. They do, supremely. They provide the setting for most of our activities and can have a huge influence on how we act. They express what we believe and what we value. That's one of the reasons why Benedictines throughout the ages have struggled to build something beautiful for God. It is no accident that their most beautiful building, the one on which most care and attention is lavished, is the community's place of prayer, the church.

Here at Hendred our oratory is very simple but we have done our best to make it a fit place for prayer. Whenever we have managed to save a little, we have added something: a vestment, a new set of psalters, some especially fine incense. The altar linen (made by D. Teresa) is always immaculate: the first and best flowers from the garden are always placed before the altar. Why? Because of what happens in the oratory and the One who dwells there. Prayer is the fundamental constituent of our Catholic heritage, that for which our art and architecture were designed.

Pius X understood this very well. His desire to renew the Church through renewal of the liturgy encompassed all the arts, including music. As Benedictines, we love singing the chant which takes us back to the first ages of the Church and brings us close to the synagogue music of Jesus' day. It is heartening that many are rediscovering this part of our heritage; heartening, too, that many are thinking seriously about liturgy; but there are other things which are not so encouraging.

We are losing familiarity with some aspects of our heritage and thereby cutting ourselves off from some of the history which has helped shape and form us. Of course the Church must grow and change; inevitably there will be loss as well as gain; but the rate at which we are losing our buildings in this country must give us pause. Are we slowly but surely losing something we shall live to regret?

(The photo shows Statio before Vespers at Stanbrook Abbey, Worcester, January 2001: a few minutes of recollection before entering choir to sing the praises of God.)