yrieithydd

I've just been to Ely for the second meeting of the Diocesan Vocations' Fellowship. Christopher Cocksworth, the Principal of Ridley Hall, was talking to us and mainly focussed on `Being Sent' which is the title of the chapter which has been added in the new edition of `Being a Priest Today'.

He started with three Gospel passages the first of which was Mark 3:13-15 especially the second half of v. 14 where it talks of the apostles being with Jesus and then being sent out to preach and that was the theme throughout the talk.

A couple of things struck me as he was talking. At one point he was talking about the Eucharist embodying this being with Jesus and being sent out and mentioning that CW had tried to make this element more pronounced and something clicked with me about the name `Mass' which I've been using more as I've gone up the candle but was never quite sure about because it seemed very odd to call the service after one word from the dismissal* and preferred the Welsh Offeren with its link to `Offering'. But seeing the Eucharist as being about us coming together to be sent out made sense of why Mass is a good name for it, though perhaps people don't realise it.

The second was when he was talking about each church as an outpost of the kingdom and Messianic Communities. When he said this, I was struck by the fact that people today are always talking of the decline of the Church, but is it that the Church is being pruned back and that smaller communities will then be enabled to embody that community and grow back from there?

I was also amused that he ended with Our Lady and St Peter, seeing Our Lady as the mother of missionaries, from her perceiving of the need, `they have no wine' at the wedding at Cana and then saying `Do whatever he tells you' and talking about how when Peter is reinstated after the resurrection in the `Do you love me?/Feed my sheep' passage it ends with `Follow me' and we're still with the being with Jesus and being sent out.

*Mass < the Missa of `Ite, Missa est' the Latin of the dismissal