An All-Consuming Fire Read Free Page B

expectations were fading fast. Felicity mouthed the words of repentance, then caught herself up short when she realized she was thinking only of her mother’s need to ask forgiveness for following “too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…” Did she need to repent of that herself?
    She was still attempting a somewhat reluctant self-examination when the words of the collect penetrated her consciousness. It was one she especially loved because it encompassed both meanings of Advent, of preparing for Christmas and for Christ’s second coming as well.
    “…who at thy first coming sent a messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that at thy second coming we may be found an acceptable people…”
    Determined to try harder, she struggled to make her smile sincere as she helped Cynthia find her place in the prayer book for the readings.
    After the New Testament reading the priest censed the altar while all stood for the highlight of the service. Choir and congregation chanted:
    “O Wisdom, coming forth from the mouth of the Most High,
    reaching from one end to the other,
    mightily and sweetly ordering all things:
    Come and teach us the way of prudence.”
    Felicity felt her tension drain away and her breathing slow as the rhythms of the service continued. During the next seven days they would complete the list of appellations: O Adonai, O Root of Jesse, O key of David, O Morning Star, O King of Nations, O Emmanuel, each one building the intensity and longing of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Now her smile for her mother was relaxed. Yes, a better way to mark time even than chocolate.
    At the end of the service Antony gave Felicity’s hand a quick squeeze before he departed into the shadows. He had sensed her stress easing during the service and for that he was grateful, but at the same time he felt his own anxieties mount. Tomorrow he would face rolling cameras in front of an audience of professionals. This would be a far cry from the classroom where he was so comfortable. And he felt woefully unprepared.
    It had been several terms since he had lectured on the mystics and his classroom notes would need considerable polishing to get them up to production standards. What a pity that Father Paulinus’s notes had been burnt in the freak fire that killed him. Antony shuddered. What a terrible way to die. And how odd that there should be an electrical fault in such a well-maintained monastery as Ampleforth.
    Antony started to run his hand through his hair, then stopped himself—he hadn’t done that for ages. He mustn’t let himself do it on camera. After all, it was a tremendous honor to be asked to take Paulinus’s place and he certainly didn’t want to let anyone down. Fortunately Father Anselm, the Superior of their community, had already faced the cameras yesterday, explaining, in his poetic way, the distinctive mystical fervor that developed in the north of England in the fourteenth century. In his winsome way Anselm had clarified the highly personal and intimate relationship with God experienced by the mystics. This, so very unlike the more rigid intellectualism of the scholastics who ruled the Church and universities at that time.
    Antony had been invited to Anselm’s book-lined office to observe the interview and he could still see it sharply in his mind.
    Anselm had given the camera a gentle smile and mused in his soft, almost ironic voice, “No one has ever been a lukewarm, an indifferent, or an unhappy mystic. If a person has this particular temperament, mysticism is the very centre of their being. It is the flame which feeds them.”
    Joy Wilkins, the twenty-something presenter, had wrinkled her forehead beneath her sleek blond fringe and asked a rather vague question about the theology of mysticism.
    Again, Anselm’s slow smile, emphasized by a twinkle in his eyes. “Mysticism is a temper rather than a theology, a complete giving of oneself to God in contemplation of Him, seeking unity with