Discovering Holy Trinity - My Spiritual Home

I came to Holy Trinity in the summer of 1991. I changed my home, my job, and my church all in the same week. Father John Capper came to visit me and took me over to Holy Trinity in my manual wheelchair to show me around. I felt that I had ‘come home’, spiritually.

Penny gave me a Missal, Father John explained the services and Phil taught me the ‘Hail Mary’ prayer. Charles and Joyce took it in turns to bring me over to church on Sundays and Wednesdays. Later on, when I got my electric wheelchair I loved going to Friday Night Mass.

In the words of the poet, George Herbert, ‘Love Bade Me Welcome’.

One Wednesday night in the winter when it was so cold you could see your breath in the air, we had Mass in the Lady Chapel and the walls were being replastered. Fr. John had a travelling altar and was wearing white fingerless gloves. The calor gas heaters made quite pungent air and the incense wouldn’t rise. Suddenly, there was a Bang! and clouds of incense rose to the barrel-roof. Out of the clouds came a voice saying: “it’s alright my children, Father John is still here”, and our worship continued. This experience has coloured my perception of Our Lord’s Baptism and the Transfiguration ever since.

On another occasion, also at Wednesday night Mass, Charles asked me if I was having “holy hysterics”, as I was trembling. I reassured him it was simply that I was so cold that my teeth were chattering! We have the Blessing of Central Heating nowadays.

Other treasured experiences include learning to be a guide in Church with Mike, helping with Heritage Open Days and Concerts and having help to scatter rose petals at Corpus Christi. The love and care of my Church family is constant and ongoing and enables me to take part in processions of High Days and Holy Days like Palm Sunday and Christ The King and also Stations of the Cross.

Holy Trinity’s worship is in the Anglo-Catholic tradition with the heritage and ambience of the Oxford Movement. We worship in ‘the beauty of Holiness’. There is prayer in the stones at Holy Trinity and I often feel that God is so present, I would like to ‘fall on my face’ to worship Him. I had awareness of the Book of Common Prayer, which my Daddy loved all his life. My parents introduced me to Anglo-Catholicism at my first Midnight Mass in the Cathedral when I was 15 years old. I was captivated by it and have been ever since.

In his poem, ‘High Flight’, John Maggee wrote: -

Oh I have loosed the sourly bonds of Earth

And touched the Face of God!

Worshipping at Holy Trinity has enabled me to grow spiritually, with joy and laughter and discipline, and to do just that.