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Alas, no more 'miracles', whatever the weather
A Yorkshire monastery is to drop its popular annual open house event. Religious Affairs Correspondent Michael Brown laments the passing of Commem Day at Mirfield.
There was no ecclesiastical knees-up – or knees-down, come to think of it – quite like it. But Commemoration Day at the Community of the Resurrection, the Anglican religious community between Huddersfield and Dewsbury, is no more.
The last one, it emerged this week, took place last July and there will not be another one next July or ever again. Rising costs, as reported in the Yorkshire Post on Tuesday, have put the kibosh on it.
More's the pity. "Commem Day" – it was never Commemoration Day to the initiated – drew devotees to Mirfield from all parts of the land. And a motley mix of the sacred and the social, the solemn and the silly, the day truly was.
The eclectic gathering was always on the second Saturday of July. The centrepiece: a Solemn Mass in a huge marquee on the lawn in front of the mansion-turned-monastery that is the brethren's home.
The Mass was performed as all good Catholic worship – Anglican or Roman – should be: with music and with colour. And the smoke of incense curled from a well-polished thurible as the gathered craned their necks to get a better view. And the homily was listened to with rapt attention so that any suggestion of low church waywardness in the preacher might be mentally noted and gleefully commented on afterwards.
Afterwards was when the throng – up to 5,000 attended Commem Day – trekked down the hill past the monastery's great, tunnel-vaulted church by Tapper to the cricket field within the grounds for a jolly picnic. Yes, the cricket field: Commem Day was as English as it was Anglican.
There, as sandwiches were munched and flasked tea drunk, church gossip as delicious as the food was exchanged. "What! James Jones for York when David Hope goes? Never! He's far too ambitious. We'd better have a novena at Saint John's to make sure he stays in Liverpool, my dear."
And: "My money is on Graham James at Norwich. He's certainly a man to watch and would be all right at York." And: "What about John Packer of Ripon? The fellow's liberal enough. And it's a liberal they're said to want at York."
The Community of the Resurrection – CR to these initiates – is over a century old. Founded in 1892, it has been at Mirfield – actually, Battye Ford – in the mansion that nearly became the Bishop of Wakefield's palace, since early last century.
From the start its aim has been a simple one: to follow God's call in seeking to reproduce the life of the first Christians "in the Apostles' teaching and the fellowship, in the breaking of the bread and prayers".
"We are," said founder Charles Gore (later Bishop of Worcester and later still of Oxford) "only some clergymen trying to be good". But there were those who imagined that these clergymen were up to no good at all.
In the early days, a gent signing himself "Concerned Protestant Churchman," wrote to the local paper to allege that the so-called monks of Mirfield were, in fact, Jesuits in disguise "whose aim is to lure our womenfolk into the dreaded confessional". Another outraged fellow accused the brethren of "openly practising celibacy in the streets".
Times changed; tolerance grew. And Mirfield CR has long been regarded as just as respectable as Mirfield Parish Church down the road. And Commem Day preachers, who in the distant past were almost always high church darlings such as Graham Leonard when he was Bishop of London, came in more recent times to include the likes of Robert Williams when he was Bishop of Bradford. Williams is the son of a Protestant Belfast shipyard worker: you can't get more low church than that.
Commem Day actually commemorated not the sounding of the community but the opening of the adjacent college where priests are trained. It started as a simple tea party when the 20th century was very young. A lot of funny stories used to be told about it by one of the monks who lived to be very old.
"The late Lord Halifax, the one who was Foreign Secretary, used to be a great supporter of ours," Fr Gabriel Sanford recalled before his death in 1994 at the age of 89.
"When he came he was the guest of honour in the refectory, sitting on the Superior's right for the slap-up meal on Commem Day, while Lady Halifax, his wife, was having to make do with sandwiches on the cricket field along with everyone else. That shows you what a chauvinistic lot we were in those days, in the house it was strictly men only. The very first woman to eat in the refectory was Princess Margaret in the 1960s when Hugh Bishop was Father Superior. Before then you almost had to have a private Act of Parliament to get a woman in.
"Anyway, I particularly remember one year when Lord Halifax came. It was in the days when, in the church, we had some very primitive devices to keep the organ at the right temperature. A great old-fashioned collection of big bowls of water they were, very Heath Robinson and parked all over the place.
"Well, during Commem Day, High Mass in the church – before we had the marquee outside – Lord Halifax somehow managed to sit in one of these things. This was a major catastrophe as the Mass was going on at the High Altar, and the noble lord's trousers got thoroughly soaked.
"Anyway, we managed to smuggle his Lordship out of the church and into the house and find him a spare pair of pants that belonged to Fr Ralph Bell, a well-known member of the community who, dead now, was of ample girth."
Fr Sanford, a member of CR for almost 40 years, knew Fr Bell well. He was community groundsman when the young Gabriel joined the monastery and it was by Ralph Bell that Gabriel was told: "Commem Day is called the Mirfield Miracle because on Commem Day it is a miracle that it never, ever, rains."
It was a fallacy, of course. It did rain, sometimes heavily. Now, alas there will be no more Commem Days, whatever the weather.
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Weather for Yorkshire
Saturday 26 May 2012
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