Job lot
“HOW do you get a job like that?” Dr Parry, my erstwhile best man, and I had just been in the Basilica of the Most Holy Blood, in Bruges. He was referring to the priest seated behind the glass case that holds the vial containing the cloth that was dabbed in the blood and is now venerated as a relic.
The priest sat there, not making eye contact with those of us who filed past, but staring intently at the matryoshka of holiness over which he had been given this nominal jurisdiction.
I had to tell Dr Parry that I wasn’t really sure how one did get a job like that: it was one of those jobs, like being Archbishop of Canterbury, where it was difficult to tell whether it was a reward or a punishment.
Royal flush
THE priest reminded me of a sort of holy checkout worker. His green chasuble was a little redolent of the staff tabards at the big Asda in Huyton, which, I recall, enjoyed something close to pilgrimage status when I served my curacy in Liverpool.
Pilgrims still come to Bruges today. The only disappointment in the basilica is that the Holy Blood is stored upstairs, in the rather clumsy Gothic Revival chapel. Were I to be rewarded or punished with a job like that, I should much rather be downstairs, in the chapel of St Basil, a sublime Romanesque survival from the aftermath of the Second Crusade, when the great Doctor’s relics were brought to Bruges from Jerusalem.
St Basil’s Chapel also contains a rather wonderful Madonna and Child of the early 14th century. She is not as visited as her counterpart by Michelangelo in the Church of Our Lady. That’s a shame, I think, as I much prefer her. No pale, wan maiden here, but a rosy and full-cheeked mother, staring out confidently.
Later, after we had sampled some of the beer for which — alongside its art — Bruges is famed, the flushed cheeks of our Flemish hosts caused another friend to remark that he could see why such a characteristic had become so prominent in the region’s sculpture. Less, I think, making God in our own image, and more a hallowing of the particular — which, after all, is what the incarnation is about.
Convenience stalls
DESPITE its reputation as a city of the dead, I found Bruges anything but. As the flushed cheeks bore witness, the city has a youthful population and a remarkable nightlife. On the Friday evening, despite the winter cold, bar-goers spilled out on to cobbled streets by belfries and béguinages. If you want a city that feels dead on a Friday night, don’t go to Bruges: go to London.
Bruges is also better prepared for the inevitable aftermath of beer consumption than our capital, as pristine urinals rise from the streets at nightfall. I recounted this wonder at a lunch, back in Oxford, with a former chaplain of Brasenose. It prompted him to tell a marvellous story of having once spotted Robert Runcie scuttling across the front quad, incognito in his Guards tie.
He approached and asked the, by then, former archbishop whether he needed any help. “No, thank you,” came the reply. “I’m just here to use the facilities. I’m off to see the nuns, and I can’t remember if they’ve got provision for the likes of us.”
Involuntary abstinence
OXFORD itself is somewhat subdued at the moment. No carnival moments here of late, as the University broods on the near-miss of its most recent Chancellor election. How different would the national situation now be, had Peter Mandelson done more than one afternoon’s campaigning in the King’s Arms?
It isn’t only politics, nor the naturally reflective time of the ’gesimas, which have resulted in this ambience. Between the floodwaters that seem to have permanently replaced the grass of Port Meadow and the work at the railway station — which was threatened as long ago as 2010, when I first came to the city — there is a deepened sense of its being cut off from the rest of the world. We aren’t quite in a supply-chain issue just yet, although things are looking rough in some quarters.
At high table recently, a don lent over and informed me, with appropriate melancholy, that he had reviewed the week’s menu, and “The savoury jellies are back again.” Lenten discipline indeed.
Joined up
AS I return from Bruges, news comes of very real supply problems elsewhere on the Continent. When I arrived at Charlbury, one of my first acts was to set up a relationship with a church in Ukraine. I had been accosted, at a wedding party in Mulgrave Castle, by a woman who was about to go out to Kharkiv as an aid worker, and knew that I had just been appointed to the living here in Charlbury. Would a twinning relationship be possible?
Kharkiv is Oxford’s sister city; but a short distance to its north is the little town of Slatyne. Given that it is about the same size as Charlbury, and a similar distance from its dominant urban neighbour, we — with the help of Ada, Andrew, and Zhenia — set up a relationship. Our churches are dedicated to the same person, too, since Our Lady of Kazan and St Mary the Virgin are different iterations of her whom we honoured in Bruges.
We Zoom one another and chat, celebrating their successes as they do ours, and commiserating with their sorrows, as they do ours, too. It has been a mutually enriching relationship: I am as thankful for their prayers for us as they are for ours.
Inevitably, however, even though Oxford currently feels cut off, Kharkiv actually is, and so we have sought to provide practical help where we can, so as to convert prayers into action.
We have raised money to restore wells, and to provide an aid vehicle, but news comes this month of increased drone activity over the little town, which makes even being outside supremely dangerous. It is a reminder that rain is by far the least dangerous thing to fall from the sky, and that we should continue our prayers for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters.
Touched by grace
IN THE parish, we are turning to Lent, rain-soaked but hopeful. Inevitably, this time of year brings more sick communions than usual. One, to a retired priest, is particularly moving.
I was wearing a stole — green, as we had just turned back into the brief respite of Ordinary Time. It was frayed and worn, a century old or more, I would guess, but it has “JESUS” stitched in gold at each end. As I came over to give the sacrament, the recipient saw the name, held the stole at the point where it was embroidered, and then raised it slowly to their lips, all the while clinging closely to the Holy Name.
The ordinary round of ministry can provide images as powerful as all the statues and relics of Bruges. It was one of those occasions when the pain and privilege of vocation elide into a moment of deep grace. “How”, I wondered as I walked back along the lanes to church, “did I get a job like this?”
The Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie is the Vicar of Charlbury with Shorthampton, in the diocese of Oxford.
