The Holy Thief by Ellis Peters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The second to last volume in The Cadfael Chronicles is another wonderfully engaging and crafted story. With plots and subplots, characters old and new, the coming of flood and felon to Shrewsbury, and to the Abbey of St Peter and St Paul, provides the reader with another adventure in medieval mystery, murder and mayhem.
The Summer Of The Danes by Ellis Peters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This was an unusual volume in The Cadfael Chronicles in that the murder – there’s always a murder! – was not central to the storyline. Indeed, the murder was just barely tangential to the story, which was focussed not in the usual setting of the Abbey of St Peter and St Paul in Shrewsbury but in rather in western Wales.
Invasion, betrayal, and the conflicts of honour and duty, all feature in the wonderfully crafted and marvellously narrated story. As usual, and as we’ve come to expect from Ellis Peters, a masterpiece of good ole fashioned story telling.
The Potter’s Field by Ellis Peters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another wonderful tale from the pen of Ellis Peters drawing on the life and times of the medieval monastic sleuth known as Brother Cadfael.
An unexplained death is, as we’ve come to expect, at the centre of this particular story, yet the twists and turns end up in a very different place than might be imagined as the journey unfolds.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
The Heretic’s Apprentice by Ellis Peters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Another wonderful volume in the ongoing Chronicles of Brother Cadfael series which in this volume deals tangentially with one those aspects of Church history – the allegation and prosecution of heresy – which is both a blight on the life of the Church and a necessary part of the life of the Church.
The story, as always, involves the untimely death of residents of Shrewsbury (to which I make a mental note that I would never want to live there!) and the interaction between the monastic Brother Cadfael and the Sheriff of Shropshire in trying to untangle the mysteries that surround that untimely death in order to seek the truth.
Another engaging story, well constructed and crafted by Ellis Peters, that engages the reader and draws them into the life of the characters and the storyline.
This afternoon I managed to find some time to start perusing the latest edition of the Worship journal, a bimonthly journal published out of St John’s Abbey, Collegeville. The journal is currently celebrating its 90th year of publication and always contains some interesting articles. The current edition, the November edition of Volume 90, contained a fascinating article at the very beginning – always entitled “The Amen Corner” – from Fr Paul Turner, where he examines the current fascination with presiders of the celebration of Eucharist facing ad orientem (literally, ‘towards the East’) which, in the contemporary form of the Roman Rite, would mean that the presider has his back to the rest of the liturgical assembly for the overwhelming majority of the time.
Turner, in what is his usual style, starts his examination by going straight to the appropriate sources: the General Instruction of the Roman Missal and the rubrics of The Roman Missal. It becomes clear, in following Turner’s argument, that the contemporary liturgy’s preference is for presiders to face the assembly over which they preside except where the liturgical architecture makes this absolutely impossible. Even then, there are some clear times when the rubrics demand the presider face the people, mostly when he is addressing the liturgical assembly in some fashion. This observation makes perfect sense, of course, because it would seem thoroughly rude to speak to the assembly without facing them (at the very least!).
Turner goes on to note
Although some priests and deacons find it inspiring for the presider to lead the eucharistic prayer ad orientem, there are difficulties with it. True, the rubrics of the Mass permit it, but they by no means encourage it. Having the priest face the people is one expression of the full and active participation of all the people, which the council decreed the aim to be considered before all else (Sacrosanctum Concilium 14). (p. 490)
Turner also notes the number of times in which the rubrics and GIRM demand that the presider is required to face either the assembly or some other object, which when put together essentially mean that at no time should the presider face away from the people unless the architecture leaves him no option.
In the end, however, Turner makes what I believe to be most convincing part of his argument. His very last paragraph asserts
The liturgy and mission of the church demand the active participation of the people. If a priest finds it hard to pray while facing the people in his oratio, one wonders if he finds it hard to minister with them in his labora. The faithful are not a distraction. A presider who looks at them with love will feel himself transported ad astra, facing the face of God. (p. 491)
Paul Turner, “Amen Corner – About Face”, Worship 90 (November 2016): 484-491.
The Confession Of Brother Haluin by Ellis Peters
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
More than just your typical Cadfael medieval murder mystery, this volume in the ongoing series of The Cadfael Chronicles also features a storyline of the recognition of wrong, of conversion, and salvation. And it is this part of the storyline that is the focus of this review.
Faced with pending mortality, one of the protagonists recognises a great wrong in his distant past and, after recovery, resolves to make a suitable penance. The resulting pilgrimage is a difficult one – and features the obligatory untimely death that we’ve come to expect in each volume – but ultimately brings about peace of mind not only for that protagonists but also for many others who are incidentally associated with the original great wrong.
This is truly a conversion story for, although the primary protagonist is a long standing member of the abbey that is home to Cadfael who has come to embrace his monastic vocation, the accident that almost kills him forces him to recognise that he came to that vocation initially as a ‘second best’ option.
By the end of the volume, however, having discovered that his ‘great wrong’ was the result of anger and envy on the part of another, the protagonist has moved to a place in his life where the past is in the past, and at rest, and the now is embraced for the gift that it is.
I found this book, of all the books of The Cadfael Chronicles, the one that has had the most profound impact on me, being more than just a ‘good yarn’. This story was a morality tale in miniature and one that will occupy much in the way of thoughtful prayer.
Zeal for the promotion and restoration of the liturgy is rightly held to be a sign of the providential dispositions of God in our time, a movement of the Holy Spirit in his Church. Today it is a distinguishing mark of the Church’s life, indeed of the whole tenor of contemporary religious thought and action.
Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, no. 43 (4 December 1963)
