Happy Easter!

Thanks for the sympathetic messages! I was just having a bout of homesickness, really. I cheered up greatly last night during Vigil Mass, especially when the Gloria began and I got to ring a bell. It took the skin off my index finger, but what the heck. Who knew bell-ringing could be so dangerous?

The TLM Easter Vigil done according to the Post-1955 rubrics is absolutely splendid. It lasts two and a half hours, so I highly recommend wearing low heels and dressing for the temperature. For eight months of the year in our little wooden church, that temperature is invariably COLD.

A remedy for homesickness is, of course, traditional foodstuffs, and I was very happy that when my poor, cold, overworked husband and I returned to our post-deluge flat from Mass, I could give him a big garlicky, marjoramy bowl of biały barszcz (white sausage borscht). Although his understanding of Polish is extremely limited, Benedict Ambrose does enjoy the food.

He was also happy to see the Easter lamb cake which, though yellow, actually looks woolly, for that is how my buttercream icing turned out. This is thanks to the happy accident of not having an electric beater. If you beat up buttercream frosting with a spoon, hey presto, wool. But I have not yet learned how to produce white buttercream icing. Usually I make marshmallow icing (aka "white mountain frosting"), which comes very close to the desired colour, thanks to all the egg whites.

B.A. had to go to work this morning--Easter for Christians is Spring Chocolate Blowout for Scotland, and thus opening weekend for any cultural institution with a field that can be used for "egg" hunts--so we had our Easter Breakfast right after Easter Vigil.  We sat around eating barszcz, bread and chocolate and listening to Easter hymns and organ music on youtube.

B.A. insisted I listen to this rather modern organ piece, and I was edified to hear that it was based on the actual chants of the Easter Vigil Mass, beginning with "Lumen Christi".  Really, it is an impoverishment to be Catholic but not experience the wonderfully rich liturgies of the pre-1963 era.