My little Gnudren,
The penitential season of Advent is upon us, and Old Gnu has told you in former times that this is the season when eating chocolate is permissible only if it constitutes an act of penitence, i.e. when it comes from a chocolate filled advent calendar. This helps us better think about our sins. As you already know the other penitential season in the year is Lent. Old Gnu has also told you that in Lent we don’t eat chocolate in order to show our penitence and castigate ourselves because of our sinfulness. The cynic may remark with some justification that these two so called penitential seasons are a left over from the medieval era (as is the shape and wording of some of our Anglican liturgy). In those bygone days the church sought to keep a tight grip on people by threatening them with all sorts of damnable fates if they didn’t comply to acts of penitence, and confess their sins – sins that could only be absolved by a priest! Just imagine the horror of being buried in unconsecrated ground! I’m sure most of us are daily troubled by this thought. Or even worse being dependent on having Communion as a ticket to heaven; a task only an ordained ‘priest’ can dish out.
Well, all you sinners out there, harken unto the voice of Mrs. Gnu, for she is an holy woman. I have nicked something she has written for the parish magazine. She writes about a window in our parish church. No it’s not about draughts or double-glazing.
Thoughts on the Great East Window in All Saints Church
I wonder if you have made any New Year’s resolutions? And I wonder why so many people do make them every January. Perhaps many of us have a sense of falling short of our own expectations of ourselves, of not being good enough?
If you are in need of encouragement, look up! At least as far as the East Window (the big one behind the altar) in All Saints.
The words on the window are ‘They shall be mine, says the Lord of Hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels’. In the context of the window, this seems to refer to the disciples. Those same disciples who in the first panel sleep through most of the transfiguration, and then when they wake up, make the wrong suggestion. The disciples who, when Jesus really needs friends in Gethsemane in the second panel, are busy sleeping yet again. The disciples who largely kept a low profile at the crucifixion. Perhaps even the guards who sleep through the resurrection in the fourth panel? And certainly, the disciples who manage to stay awake to witness the ascension, in panel five, then hastily run off to hide in fear
And yet in the window, these disciples who are always getting it wrong at the crucial moments, are referred to as the ‘jewels’ of the Lord of Hosts. God who made us knows we are not perfect, that we will repeatedly mess up, yet loves us and regards us as precious anyway.
So let’s go into the New Year knowing ourselves, as an old hymn based on the window’s text put it, ‘His loved and his own’.
Mrs. Gnu has spoken. Old Gnu feels much better now, for he is a dreadful sinner. Clearly this church window does not date from medieval times. Nevertheless Old Gnu feels another desperate act of penitence coming upon him. Now where’s that chocolate Advent Calendar?
Vetus Pater Gnu
Musicorum et Theologia
Turris LA
V Mensis Decembris MMXXII