Qui diligit Deum

It is sobering that the last service that I will take as Chaplain here will be the funeral of a pupil who left but a few years ago.

That puts in context whatever I write here, despite the probably apocryphal comments of a Catholic Headmaster at a Headmasters’ conference years ago that if his school did not prepare pupils to be Prime Minister (might he mean Eton?) they did prepare their pupils for death.

My first article for The Quad In December 2009 included words from The Vision of God by former Provost Bishop Kirk: ‘The path of purity, humility and self-sacrifice is only possible to the man who can forget himself, can “disinfect himself from egoism” whose mind is not centred upon himself but at least upon his fellows and their needs, and at most and best upon God and his neighbour seen through the eyes of God’. That is the best preparation for life and for death and it is made possible by the worship we offer in this beautiful building which Kenneth Kirk calls ‘… a magic mirror both because, as we have seen, it enhances a man’s knowledge of himself and because by a mystical process it transforms him into the image of God …’.

It is gratitude for this magic mirror that marks my 13 years here as I move to be the English Chaplain of St Edward the Confessor in Lugano, Switzerland: https://stedwards.ch. That the ‘Seven Lancing Pilgrims’ below (Henry, Cooper, Joe, Benjamin, Ollie, James and Dan) with Dr Baldock and Mr Drummond, were staying in Saint Edward’s House in Walsingham in the last week of term seems especially appropriate.

Fr Roger Marsh and Fr Ian Forrester (my predecessors) passed to me the precious gift of beauty and a sense of the numinous at the Eucharist which has formed the bedrock of my ministry. As I wrote in 2009: ‘Everywhere else I have served it has been my mission to bring more frequent, more regular, more worthy celebrations of the sacred mysteries. Here I have been called to live up to what has been achieved and set in place by those who have gone before me and it has been a humbling and moving experience, from the regular daily offering of the mass in the Crypt to the ordered liturgy of our School Eucharist which is the envy of every Chaplain in the land.’

As part of this, I acknowledge and thank Alex Mason and the Choir and the legacy of Neil Cox (former Director of Chapel Music): the music is itself part of that same magic mirror which is the Eucharist. I can say the same of Andrew Wynn-Mackenzie and Sue James and all who over the years have cared for the Chapel and the worship there, including our Chapel Steward, Jeremy Tomlinson as well as Head Sacristans Miles McNamara and Shirin Mirzayasheva: all our various ministries are interdependent. This enables our pupils to encounter God, which the following did in a particular way when they were confirmed on April 24th in the first School Eucharist of term: Aimee Caddick, Dottie Constantin, Georgia Manches, Tallulah Redman, Geanina Savu, Ollie Faragher and Indie Slimmon (Upper Sixth); Cooper Forde (Lower Sixth); Bryony Allen, Oscar Earl, Charlie Fry, Max Webb and Finlay Wood (Fourth Form); Ottoline Gee, Kitty Honychurch and Will Rickett (Third Form); and Miss Emilie Harlow (Common Room).

Laus Deo: Praise God!

FR RICHARD HARRISON Chaplain