ADVENT SUNDAY

Waiting on a slip road of the A12 on my way to celebrate and preached at the Parish Mass at St. Paul’s, Goodmayes, a young driver belted into the back of my car, shoving the car out into the path of the oncoming traffic. I think I was quite fortunate that the man driving across the A12 at that moment could take avoiding action and didn’t hit me sideways on. After exchanging names and Insurance Company details I was able to drive on to St. Paul’s Church, despite feeling very shaky. I have a bruised forehead and my back was not too good for a while afterwards. At St. Paul’s the Sacristan on hearing what had happened made me a cup of coffee. I think I’ve been quite lucky to escape with hardly any physical damage; the cars driving across the A12 do so at quite a speed normally as the traffic lights give them very ;little time to get across. I hate to think about what could have been a very nasty accident.

I wasn’t able to get into the boot which has been pushed into the car’s bodywork, to get my robes, sermon etc. but was lucky enough to find a cassock alb in the Sacristy which sort of fitted me. I had to “preach of the cuff” and talked about how we could sometimes be surprised by visitors turning up unannounced. If we had been aware of their coming we wouldn’t be having a lazy day as it was we would say something like “you’ll have to take us as you find us” but we would be worried about what they would think. When Jesus comes the second time we need to be ready for him and Advent is one of the times we can start our preparations.

MY BLOG

I’ve been away in Disneyland Paris for the last few days hence nothing on the blog but tomorrow I’ll put some photo’s on here and give a few comments about the time we spent with Mickey Mouse etc.