Lighting a candle for the new Archbishop of Canterbury

Read Kate’s latest for The Tablet – Lighting a candle for the new Archbishop of Canterbury.

I went down to my church earlier this week to light a candle. I don’t do it very often, lighting a candle, I mean, because we have electronic fake candles instead of the real thing, and it’s not as much fun as it used to be.

It’s undeniably safer and cleaner. I remember old metal candlestands shaped like crowns, trays and desks; they were a fire hazard, and the wax dripped on to the floor and had to be laboriously cleaned up every so often. And yet…

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Learning the Victimae paschali for Easter

Read Kate’s latest for The Tablet – Learning the Victimae paschali for Easter

In only a couple of weeks now we will have reached Easter. As well as getting back the Gloria and the Alleluias (still sadly shorn of their exclamation mark), there is a particular extra bit of liturgy for Easter Sunday Mass.

It comes after the Second Reading and before the Alleluia-before-the-Gospel. It is of course the Victimae paschali. This is one of the “Sequences” that occur at various points in the Church’s year. Others include the Veni, Sancte Spiritus at Pentecost, and the Lauda, Sion, Salvatorem at Corpus Christi, which is where Panis angelicus comes from.

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