An All-Consuming Fire Read Free Page A

break an ankle,” she added almost grudgingly.
    Cynthia was panting when they reached the level area in front of the community church. “Now can you please explain to me what’s so special before we go in?”
    Felicity could see Corin and Nick, two other ordinands who hadn’t yet departed for the Christmas holiday, approaching from the dormitory, so she knew she had a minute or so before the service began. “
O Sapientia
is Latin for Wisdom. The week before Christmas we chant one of the ‘O’ Antiphons each evening at evensong. This is the first one, so it’s special.”
    Cynthia’s confused look told Felicity her explanation had gone over her mother’s head, so she tried again. “The ‘O’ Antiphons are ascriptions for the Messiah from the Book of Isaiah. Um, names for God, praising his qualities.”
    “Yes, dear. I do know what an ascription is.” Cynthia sounded slightly miffed.
    Felicity forbore replying that she
had
asked. “Oh, good. Well, they’ve been used since the early church. There are seven of them—one for each day of the last week of Advent. It’s a lovely way of keeping track of time.”
    “Oh, something like an advent calendar.” Cynthia gave a satisfied nod and smiled. “Remember, I always bought the ones with chocolate in them for you?”
    Felicity did remember, with an impact so strong that for a moment she could taste the chocolate on her tongue. For once her smile for her mother was unforced as she led the way into the vast Romanesque church. Candles flickering behind the purple-draped altar cast wavering shadows on the rounded arches of the chancel and behind the stalls of the choir.
    Somehow the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent were Felicity’s favorite times in the church year. Counter-cultural though it was—or perhaps because it was counter-cultural—she had come to love this time and found that there was nothing else like it for relieving the frenzy of the run up to Christmas. The somber pageantry, the minor key hymns, the solemn reminders of the fleetingness of life and the need to prepare for the eternal always spoke to her at a deep level and then made the celebrations of the festive seasons that followed even more joyous.
    She had found it hard to adjust when she first came up from London to study in this college run by monks on a remote hillside in Yorkshire. What could possibly be more unconventional than spending the week before Christmas praying in a monastery? Especially for the thoroughly modern American woman she believed herself to be. But she had learned a deep appreciation for this very uncommon experience. And an even deeper appreciation for the church history lecturer who had taught her the value of tradition by his quiet example.
    Now her heart leapt as she spotted Antony sitting in the front row of the nave. Stepping as quietly as she could across the stone floor, she slipped into the row beside him with Cynthia following close behind her. Felicity flashed Antony a quick smile that she hoped didn’t show the lingering strain of her time with her mother. But there was no time to sit because the procession was entering. The black-robed monks, their hands folded in front of their grey scapulars, filed into their place in choir behind the processional cross and, since this was a solemn evensong, a white-robed thurifer swung a thurible emitting a cloud of spicy incense. The precentor and succentor, in purple copes, took their places on opposite sides of the choir and pronounced the opening sentence antiphonaly:
    “Our God shall come,”
    “And shall not keep silence.”
    Felicity knelt with the others for the general confession, feeling squeezed between her mother and Antony, although, in truth, there was plenty of room. She and Cynthia had come to new understanding when they had been thrown together in a perilous situation just a few months earlier. She had hoped that this time of being together before her wedding would be a final healing, but her