Loving the book

Before I went to theological college, and this was a few years ago, I spent a couple of years on a part-time course for ordinands. One of my favourite people on the course was called Rick, if there had been a Hairy Bikers ordinands edition he would have fitted right in. He was from Wolverhampton, loved footie and was not totally familiar with the more liturgical end of the Church of England. Many interesting discussions ensued.
But one memory stands out more than any other. We were treated to a range of liturgical styles and time came for High Mass. Afterwards some of us were keen to know what Rick would have made of this new experience. He was pensive, which was unusual, but finally said - he must really love that Book if he goes around kissing it like that.
He was of course referring to the Gospel procession and the priest who had kissed the Gospel book before shutting it.
Much of my understanding of where we start with social outreach has come from the Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church, and more especially from the slum priests in Victorian London. Their mixture of down to earth practical action and deeply in love with Jesus spirituality made a powerful impact on the areas they served. The convent base on the recent TV series Call the Midwife shows that the impact of religious life and calling in the slum areas of London lasted well into the 1950s - until those slums were cleared in favour of the new towns and cities of tower blocks and council houses.
But back to the point. All this ritual and repetition does mean something. Kissing the Gospel book is not an empty act, it is a sacramental act in the sense that it reveals much deeper truths about the nature of God and our relationship with God. As with much of our liturgy simple acts point to the reality of who and what we are.
The slum priests built beautiful churches, to life the spirits and eyes of those in the bleakness of poverty, to introduce a feast to the senses in music and light and smell. They based themselves, often, around monastic patterns of prayer and discipline, returning to the deep well of the presence of God mindfully every few hours of the day. They took on a strict Eucharistic discipline - again keeling before the altar, day in day, returning for both blessing and challenge.
This level of discipline of foreign to many of us in parish ministry. We have not got time, we argue, to stop. There are many other calls on us. But deliberate acts of worship, of words and actions, are important to us and we are certainly not busier than a priest who was building a church, tending to the needs of thousands in tenements, running a religious house and guilds and schools - with no mobile phone and no internet.
I am not sure what I am advocating - but I know that if I never allow time to plunge into the depths of God's grace, I cannot live or preach in that grace and neither can those to whom I minister, whose lives are all sacraments to the Lord.