Of missals and memories

We've come to the end of the Church's liturgical year, and with it, sadly, the end of using the Jerusalem Bible and Grail psalms in our Masses. For me, as for many of us, these are the only liturgical scriptures we have known and grown up with, and their dynamic, poetic rhythms and passages have soaked themselves into my bones, even while I have used other translations for study or comparison. 

And we've also come to the end of this month we dedicate to remembrance. There is an extra layer for me, in that my mother died on the 11th - Armistice Day - and I cannot help remembering that from that moment, my father ailed and died only three months later. Time, of course, becomes fluid, and plays games with remembering, stretching and concertinaing in a single movement. Thus, earlier this month it was a shock to realise that it's now eighteen years since that awful night in 2006. Eighteen years already...? - and not eight? Or eighteen months? Except that it can't be eighteen months, because the rawness, the bleak crushing-ness of the pain has gone... Or rather, the memory of the pain remains, but the feeling of it has softened into an underlying wistfulness, bubbling up at certain times, such as this dark, damp month of fallen leaves and anniversaries.

But remembering our loved ones is better than forgetting them... And so we cherish the tangible items; the photos and trinkets, gifts and mini-heirlooms which carry within them so many memories. And that's what my two missals have done for me, over the past 17-18 years. My father gave me my Sunday missal when I was fourteen, and had started reading at Mass. It wasn't the most exciting gift for an adolescent, even one going through a devout phase, but I held on to it. It came with me each time I moved house, although it mostly sat, untouched, on a bookshelf - along with my Grail psalter - whilst I wandered other paths... And it was still there when I eventually returned to God, and to reflecting on the Sunday readings, some years later. And then, when I entered the Society of the Sacred Heart thirty years ago, my parents gave me the weekday missal - this time a more welcome gift, in constant use.

Could I have imagined, in the 1970s and 90s, or later, when my parents died, that these missals would one day be rendered obsolete? In 2006-7 I had no idea that within a few years the simplicity of the collects and prayers would be replaced. But the JB readings and Grail psalms seemed set to endure; I could still use the missals for those - until today. Now, like parishes and God's people across the country, I have books which need to be reverently disposed of - or else sit once again, untouched, on a bookshelf... 

But for now, I will do neither. Leafing through them yesterday, as though for one last time, I found myself looking deliberately beyond the texts, and noticing, with heightened acuteness, the illustrations and the brief reflections on each Sunday's theme. They've been there all these years, but always as a kind of supporting cast, there to enhance the stars, but not outshine them... now, though, the texts having been forced to stand aside, the reflections and illustrations have presented themselves for my new attention and relish. They are all that survives; but more than that, they are timeless, and I can reflect on them each Sunday, and delve into the images at the start of each season.

So, for now, I will hold on to my missals, and my memories, and see where they take me...

And a blessed, hope-filled Advent to you all: may we lift our souls to Christ, dwell in confidence and truly know our liberation from all fear...