Tuesday 3 February 2009

Laborare est orare ..

Even a humble priest has to get out there with his shovel and clear a pathway.

Despite the snow a few courageous souls managed to make it to Mass on Monday and Tuesday. Today we celebrated the optional Memorial of St Blaise and we followed tradition with the blessing of throats at the end of Mass.

As there were only a few at Mass and they had made such an effort to get here, we all enjoyed a cup of coffee together afterwards to help them on their homeward journey.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well done Fr Míċeál.

Did you build a snowman too?

Anonymous said...

'To work is to pray' - is that the translation or have I forgotten all my Latin? Interesting thought as we go about our daily routine.

Another thought - there are few other drives in Banstead that could do with clearing Fr Miceal - we could sponsor you per drive!

St Ann's Parish said...

Thank you Cindy, I shall wait until we have fresh snow on Thursday to build a snowman !

St Ann's Parish said...

Flick, you are top of the Latin class; full marks for your translation.

I would happily clear other drives if I had time, it may be worth waiting until we have more snow !!

Anonymous said...

The brain cells still work well as I enjoy translating all your Latin words.

We were in spirit with you all this morning as we had planned to go to Mass but could not get out of our drive... We could even smell the lovely aroma of the coffee.

Anonymous said...

Yet another thought! If 'to work is to pray' and if by singing we pray twice over, then 'to work AND sing' is to pray ...how many times over?? Now I'm confused!

Either which way, we must be getting it right somewhere along the line, surely!

For you Fr. Miceal, shovelling all that snow .... you have sure done a lot of praying today! (but no singing?)

St John's, Horsham said...

It's a beautiful and famous Benedictine phrase from. I think, the Rule of St Benedict - the full meaning being:
'To work is to pray. To pray is to work.'

You've obviously had much more snow in Surrey than we've had in Sussex.

And don't people over-react to a little bit of snow?

Anonymous said...

Following what St John's Horsham said here are a few additional comments taken from the TES:
A: Post after post from teachers, hoping that poor seasonal weather will allow them to spend a day at home, neglecting the needs of their pupils. We struggled in all weathers, my generation had a 'pupil first' culture... We also bought in a couple of buckets of coal each to keep the classroom fires going...
B: Also the thought of driving on these roads is daunting as it is...the thought of driving on them in the dark after the snow has covered all the ice is quite frightening...
A: We strapped tennis racquets to our feet.
C: I don't think the schools tennis rackets would be up to it - we're only a primary so they're only mini ones. I could use mine but it would mean having to hop to school - I only have one!