And another thing

A message of hope from a teeming church in Kensington

19 March 2005

Yet all is not lost here either, at any rate on this side of that useful ditch, sanctified by God and history, the English Channel. To anyone who needs a lifting of the spirit, I advise attendance, on Sunday at ten o’clock, at the family mass celebrated at the Church of Our Lady of Victories, in Kensington High Street. It is not for the squeamish or the lovers of ecclesiastical decorum and liturgical order. If you want that you must go to Brompton Oratory. No: this is a church for the people, a mass to demonstrate the sheer fecundity of the human race under the blessing of an almighty providence, a swarming, teeming, jostling kermesse of Sunday churchgoing at its most elemental, spontaneous and joyful. The big church is packed — it must be the most crowded by far of any place of worship in London — and two thirds of the congregation are children. Indeed many of them are babes in arms, or toddlers who constantly escape and go on expeditions up the aisle, or on to the high altar, and have to be recaptured by their mothers or fathers. From time to time there is a wailing from an indignant infant, but on the whole the children are well behaved.

Some of the older ones are altar boys and girls, solemn in their surplices, that curious garment dating from late Roman times. Others are in the choir. Teenagers read the lessons in clear, distinct voices, with attention to the pronunciation of consonants and correctness of vowel sounds which puts the present-day BBC to shame. But that is so all can hear and understand. There are no classes in this church. No races or nations either. The children and their parents come from all over the world, but they mingle together freely and lovingly. And God is there too, ubiquitously, on the benches and in the sacristy, on the altar and in the pulpit, perching on the processional banners or on the ledges of the clerestory windows, high up among the beams of the roof — an almost palpable and visible presence in this grand congregation of His friends and worshippers. Who said that God is dead? He is manifestly alive and vibrant in leafy Kensington, together with His teeming army of children and youth and their hardworking progenitors.