No servers, no readers, no sign of peace, but it was Mass at last

IT WAS a low-key, ordinary service. But it was also extraordinary.

The Westminster Cathedral doors opened at 7.30am, allowing ushers half an hour before Mass began, to get people seated two metres apart, shown the hand sanitiser machines and make them aware of arrangements for Communion. This was where liturgy met public health.

Catholics, unlike Anglicans, have been able to watch Mass in their churches throughout lockdown via streaming; there were no kitchen table altars for their clergy. It was the best that could be offered – but oh, how we missed being in our sacred spaces.

Catholic Mass is a feast for all the senses. And even though this Mass was pared down – no altar servers, no readers, no music, no sign of peace – it was still indisputably Mass with all senses attuned.

And it made me realise what had been most absent from the online experience: the taste of Communion, and that lingering smell of incense mixed with candle wax that tells me that I am in the sanctuary of church.

It was Communion, above all, where changes were most obvious. There was no chalice, only Communion hosts for the congregation. A prie-dieu between priest and each communicant kept them apart.

Kneeling and receiving Communion on the tongue were banned. Instead, each person stretched out their hands and a host was dropped into them, all done in complete silence.

“May Almighty God bless you,” said Fr Julio Albornoz, acting as reader as well as celebrant, at the end of the short, half-hour service. It was certainly a blessing to have been back at Mass.