Holy Saturday - waiting...

Even though I should expect it by now, it's always a shock to go in to the church on Holy Saturday morning and feel how completely empty, how very much NOT a church it is...
The Sanctuary as stripped as we can make it, the aumbry empty, the Sanctuary lamp extinguished - and instead, there are people sweeping, dusting, polishing whichever way you turn.

I love this "Feast of the Holy Dusters". I met it first (like pretty much everything I most cherish in Holy Week) at St John the Divine, Kennington, where it delighted me that this really was a whole-church event...I was given a chandelier, some brasso and a chunk of wadding and instructed to keep polishing til I could see my face. My companions at this task were a retired priest (of whose brain I was in abject awe) and a lively small boy, who got most of himself covered in brasso before abandoning the task. I had never got to talk to either of them before, so the morning was unexpectedly rewarding in all sorts of ways - and when we emerged from our particular corner, it was to a church transformed.
At St Matthew's there is less holy tat to care for, so we tend to work on a larger canvas. My husband is more than happy up a ladder, so takes on the once-a-year clean of all high places - rather too often dislodging a load of cobwebs immediately AFTER someone has loving swept the surfaces below. The brass team will already have performed sparkling wonders...but somehow, nobody ever remembers the paschal candle stand, so that often falls to me.


This year I found myself reduced to tears by it - not because it was so particularly filthy (though a year's worth of baptisms, a good 40 this time) meant that it was distinctly waxy - but because I realised that this, something I have used so often...lighting the candle for each of those baptisms, without even thinking about it....and now it will not be part of my life.
The beautiful new Paschal candle will burn down for others. I won't be here to see it...

And this realisation encouraged me to look at other parts of the church that I've taken absolutely for granted. The icon, on semi-permanent loan from my title parish, that stands on the high altar. The high altar itself, where I have presided at 8.00 Communion 3 weeks out of every 4. 
No more 8.00s for the foreseeable future - so I wonder if anyone will even use it at all! (At my last 8.00 I surprised myself by kissing the altar on depature: I'm catholic, but not often THAT catholic - but it seemed to matter to say "Goodbye" properly)...The holy water stoup that was, once upon a time, a font - which we found buried in brambles at the bottom of the churchyard...The crucifix that hangs over the pulpit...
Things I will miss simply because they have been there - the backdrop to ministry for 6 years. 
Suddenly the simple process of a church spring-clean was transformed into a rite of farewell. 
The votive candle stand in the Lady Chapel....The olive-wood figure of Our Lady that I found after much debate as to what sort of a statue we could actually afford but still want...
Special things, ordinary things, things you never notice at all til you know you will be leaving them.

Tears over a candle-stand seem really silly - but it represents the unthinking moments that are the stuff of life in any place, and it's the every-day as much as the extra-special that I know I'll miss as I go.