Somewhere in Time
©
Seán Manchester, 2003
“Then
tell me not, remind me not,
Of
hours which, though for ever gone,
Can
still a pleasing dream restore,
Till
thou and I shall be forgot,
And
senseless, as the mouldering stone
Which
tells that we shall be no more.”
~ Lord Byron
W
Sightings of people who are mistaken for
stray ghosts are probably few and far between because the circumstances that
make such apparent hauntings possible seem to require precision not easily
comprehensible to us. This does not rule out the genuinely supernatural
manifestation of either angelic or demonic origin, as my late colleague Professor Devendra Prasad Varma would have been quick to
point out ― and as I would have been equally quick to agree. Yet all
along I have wondered about time travel. That is not to say that much of what
we sometimes mistake as shades should always be viewed as time travellers from
the past or future passing through our present. However, it is quite possible
that we are experiencing a glimpse of the same space in a different time frame.
Albert Einstein showed us that time and space are linked. Einstein’s relativity
theory, some might argue, was superseded in 1984 by string theory, ie
the concept that everything is connected by tiny vibrating strings, smaller
than atoms, across eleven dimensions ― leading to the M theory. Yet
nobody seems to know what “M” stands for in this latest theory.
Dr Mallett, who is a professor of
theoretical physics at the University of Connecticut, is in the process of
constructing a time machine that he claims will enable him to send sub-atomic
particles into the past. To do this he proposes to create a time warp where
light is slowed down to a crawl and contained in two opposing beams of light
using a ring laser. Mallett calculates that at high enough intensities, space
and time could be twisted in the circle within. His time machine might resemble
a long light cylinder. “Once it can be done, even in the simplest situation, in
the most primitive way, the engineering obstacles will be overcome,” says the
professor, adding: “I honestly believe this will be the century for time
travel.” There is one inescapable drawback. The machine being designed by
Professor Ronald Mallett will only be able to travel as far back as the moment
it is switched on.
Mark 9: 23 tells us: “All things are
possible to him who believes.” However, the possibility of time travel poses
ethical and theological quandaries. Stephen Hawking has proposed a “chronology
protection conjecture” ― an as-yet-unknown law of physics that would
preserve causality and safeguard history from meddlers. I would not be able to
return to that fateful afternoon in August 1970, for example, and execute,
instead of the spoken exorcism rite inside the vault, a more effective, albeit
illicit, remedy to expel the demonic presence with the possible direct
consequence of Lusia, and other victims after 1970, still being
with us. Moreover, an astrophysicist would quickly point out that most of the
blueprints for a time machine stipulate that the traveller cannot journey back
to an era before the device was first switched on. Yet it is claimed that a
time machine able to take the traveller into the past, far beyond when it was
constructed, was built in the 1950s. It was described as the Chronovisor.
Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti
(1925-1994) was a Benedictine monk, scientist and foremost authority on archaic
music (2000 BC to AD 1200). Along with the help of scientists Enrico Fermi and
Werner von Braun, Ernetti is said to have developed the Chronovisor, a
time machine that could reach back into the past way beyond its own invented
existence to reconstruct the sights and sounds of history. A world-class
scholar of prepolyphonic music, he also held a degree in quantum and subatomic
physics. His principal research was in the field of time travel. Father Père
François Brune knew Ernetti well, and, based on his own experience, concludes
that Ernetti was too upright, knowledgeable, intelligent and accomplished to
have any need to fabricate a story, and wonders if the Chronovisor, or
information pertaining to it, may lie somewhere in the Vatican where it remains
hidden from the rest of the world.
My own immersion in music, the arcane
and indeed ecclesiasticism led to impressions of an understanding of a form of
time travel not so removed from those of Ernetti. Using his knowledge of the
physics of chordal structures, and based on a new principle he had uncovered,
involving musical frequencies, harmonic resonance and the relationship of these
things with the astral plane, Ernetti constructed a time machine from which he
claimed to have taken photographs of the past. Such images from across the
millennia were gained by an approach and perspective significantly removed from
Mallett’s dependance on s²=x²+y²+z²-ct² where s stands for space-time (based on
Einstein’s revolutionary concept of space-time, ie time is distance and
distance is time) and a Lorentz transformation invariant, ie the
distance has the same value for all inertial observers. That notwithstanding,
Einstein’s conclusion that space and time are aspects of the same thing, and
that matter and energy are also two aspects of the same thing (E=mc²), is
invaluable to all potential builders of time machines. Venice-based Father
Ernetti, of course, incorporated rather more than theoretical physics into his
calculations when inventing his camera that allegedly could focus into the past
or future and take pictures of events from that time.
My early career as a professional photographer, life-long involvement in music,
and later embrace of ecclesiasticism made the Benedictine monk’s approach to
time travel at once comprehensible and something I naturally felt empathetic
toward. Whether it was, is, or ever could be a reality, is not something I feel
qualified to conjecture ― for I
have already experienced enough to know that all manner of things are possible.
Yet it is patently the final frontier to tempt those who might seek a future in
the past.
Compassion, courtesy, gentleness,
integrity, honour and dignity might have all but departed this world. Yet there
remains this one possibility of catching a glimpse of such lost innocence of
truth and beauty ― rare qualities that still exist somewhere in time.
Sarah
~ somewhere in time ~ attending her wedding anniversary.
* *
*
My father introduced me to Edgar Allan Poe, and my mother introduced me to St Teresa of Avila and, later on, to St Thérèse of Lisieux. My mother’s death on the day following the feast of the latter was the most difficult moment of my life. Her last breath came at twenty minutes past five o’clock on that fateful Friday of 2 October 1992. All I can remember is my father’s distant voice proclaiming: “She’s gone.” Two little words that were of themselves devastating ― yet I knew in my heart she had not gone at all, but had passed into the Lord’s safekeeping where she would be for eternity. Emotionally, however, I would never recover from the loss. Folk found her special and unique. She was much loved by virtually everyone who met her.
The
author’s parents at his Hampstead apartment ~ March 1984.
Two words uttered a few hours earlier
that my mother repeated as I left the room: “… love you.” We smiled. But
we were seeing each others smile for the final time. For these two words were
the very last we exchanged. Within hours she was dead.
Like her favourite saints, my mother
remained somehow fragrant in death, resisting decomposition until the last;
even when I replaced the lid on her coffin in the stone chapel for the very
last time. She became the “first person I would anoint and on whose behalf I
would recite the prayers for the newly dead, since receiving the mitre.” [The Grail Church, Holy Grail, 1995, page
102.]
My mother’s funeral was also the first I
would conduct in my new office as bishop. It was held at Islington and St
Pancras Cemetery on the feast day of St Teresa of Avila.
The
author ~ prior to his mother’s funeral in 1992.
I also conducted a funeral service in
the same cemetery chapel some eight years later for my father. Whereas the
voice of Mario Lanza singing Ave Maria accompanied the conclusion to my
mother’s service, a jazz piece in gospel mode, titled A Love Divine,
quickly followed by Lynn Howard’s beautiful rendition of Softly &
Tenderly closed my father’s funeral. He, at least, had seen the opening of
the new century and millennium. Yet ― in his own mind ― he felt he had
little reason to remain much longer after the death my mother; he just lost the
will to live in a world without her. It was all terribly sad, but
understandable. Diana Brewester, my London secretary, who was
present at my father's funeral, would sadly pass away herself in December 2003.
Only three days separated Diana’s and my
own birth. We had a great deal in common, sharing an appreciation of the arts,
music and literature. Her sudden death, after being diagnosed with cancer only
a couple of month’s prior, came as an immense shock. Father Hubert Condron of
St Joseph's Catholic Church and I attended to her funeral at that same chapel where
I had conducted my parent’s services. Diana had known both my parents and was
especially close to my mother. I sprinkled her coffin with holy water, and
spoke to those assembled about her life, and about her generosity of spirit and
kindness. Colleagues of mine from the 1960s and 1970s, whom Diana had also come
to know, assembled in the cemetery chapel. Now we were brought together by the death of
our friend. One later remarked that even in death Diana brought us together. And we were all grateful for the reunion.
When I wrote this memoir, it had to be
dedicated to my parents from whom I inherited some of the qualities that set me
apart. In early 2003, as I began to put pen to paper, I received an 1814
edition of Holy Dying [The Rule and Exercises of HOLY DYING in which are
described the Means and Instruments of Preparing Ourselves and Others
Respectively for A BLESSED DEATH, etc by Jer. Taylor, D.D., Chaplain in
Ordinary to King Charles the First, Printed and Published by J. Keymer, 1814] from a total
stranger who, in the previous month, had commented on an internet forum managed
by FoBSM (Friends of Bishop Seán Manchester):
“Reality is not limited to the extent of
your own experience. Thankfully, I have never experienced a vampire, but I have
experienced other things which suggest that vampires (as described by Bishop
Manchester) are possible and probable. If one has faith in God in all His
Glory, one must believe in Satan in all his abhorrence. You cannot disable one
side of the scheme of things. Faith is only as strong as its foundations. How
many of those who criticise Bishop Manchester have no faith in God? How can
their criticism of his redemptive ministry be valid when it is extracted from
the context of a more general criticism of Christian faith? Vampires, why not?”
The above comments were made by
Elisabeth Harrington, a post-graduate theology student at an Anglo-Catholic
college within a university, whose gracious surprise of presents, including the
rare and valuable Holy Dying, followed her remarks. I responded:
“What a delight to receive your kind
gift of Holy Dying which shall doubtless provide much to ponder. Our gratitude
also extends to the no less welcome English Sonnets [1882], and the Horæ
Tennsonianæ [1832], where much pleasure will be derived. The etching from
one of Cassell’s photographs of Highgate Cemetery is, of course, poignant in
the extreme. A suitable frame has already been ordered. You are most generous
and considerate in forwarding these wonderful items. Pax et benedictio.”
[Correspondence,
30 March 2003.]
The foot of my notepaper carried, as it
frequently does, the words of Our Lord and Saviour from John 20: 29:
“Blessed are
they who did not see, and yet believed.”
Keith
Maclean shortly after the author met him.
Keith Maclean, who had joined our Order
at its foundation, presented me, on the occasion of my birthday in 2003, with The
Hours of Catherine of Cleves, comprising one hundred and sixty colour
plates. When opening this book upon its receipt, the first plate to greet my
eyes was Saint Michael Battling a Demon. A resplendent St Michael is
locked in combat with a demon, who claws at his armour as he is pierced by the
archangel-saint’s long cross-staff. Although both St Michael and the demon are
winged, their struggle takes place on the ground. The patron saint of exorcists
impales the demonic manifestation in order to remove it from our earthly plane.
Such are the images from this most popular devotional book of the later Middle
Ages.
Exactly one year earlier, on 15 July
2002 (Pacific time), I gave my last interview on Coast to Coast,
transmitted from St Louis, USA. I spoke to George Noory for two hours about the
dangers of Left-hand Path occultism, cults and the supernatural. Previously on
the same programme I had talked to Art Bell for three and a half hours. This
was transmitted on 23 August 2001. My return for another live programme with George
Noory (Art Bell had now retired) in 2002 was the fulfilment of a promise to do
one more show. In the interim, my final UK live interview had taken place on 20
February 2002 at the invitation of James Whale for Talksport Radio. I
had spoken with James Whale some years earlier for the same station’s Paranormal
Day, [Paranormal Day on Talk Radio, the precursor of Talksport,
where the author spoke with James Whale from 11.35pm to 12.05am at the
conclusion of a day devoted exclusively to discussing the unknown] and there were
no problems. This time the presenter was rude and hostile from the onset. An
hour of my time from midnight to one o’clock in the morning had been provided
to inform him and his listeners about things metaphysical. Earlier that evening
a documentary about Aleister Crowley had been transmitted by Channel
Four television, and I saw this an opportunity to discuss Crowley and the satanic revival. I believed that listeners would
expect me to discuss this topic, and I was right. But James Whale was
exceptionally discourteous and offensive from the opening moments of the programme.
This took us off air for a couple of minutes. When I eventually returned, the
senior producer obliged Whale to apologise for his highly insulting behaviour.
His apology, of course, was disingenuous, and I sensed that I would face an
exasperating time over the next sixty minutes. I could have aborted the
interview at any point, but listeners had stayed up to hear what I had to say,
and they were not going to be disappointed. Due to the dignity of my office
being compromised by Whale, I filed my dismay with the Broadcasting
Standards Commission who, on 31 October 2002, upheld my complaint
much to his chagrin.
The Commission, whose chairman was the
Anglican Bishop Richard Holloway, found that I had been treated unfairly, and
that conditions for interviewing a person holding the dignity of an episcopal
office had been breached from the start. The only time I have otherwise
complained to the BSC was over the back announcement added at a later stage to
a recorded contribution I made for an investigative piece titled “Hidden
Depths: The Occult” transmitted by 101.4 Angel FM. This announcement
served to inform listeners that I was not a Roman Catholic bishop, and carried
an unwelcome innuendo with regard to my denomination. In the Commission’s view,
the back announcement was unfair in that it did not reflect my status as a
properly consecrated bishop in the Old Catholic Church, unjustifiably raising doubts in
listeners’ minds as to my standing. The complaint against the makers of the
programme and the radio station was, therefore, upheld. During the hearing,
those responsible for the programme, ie producer and presenter, said
that it had not been their intention to suggest I was not a bona fide
Catholic bishop, which statement I accepted.
My decision to withdraw from ever being
interviewed again by television and radio was not linked to any of these
experiences. I was in my thirty-third year of making contributions to the
broadcast media, and enough is enough. By the time I retired from giving
interviews, general standards had slipped considerably with attention to
accuracy being of little or no concern to the programme makers. My last two
television appearances, for example, witnessed my on screen caption, in one
instance, being completely inaccurate, and in the other, inappropriate and
unjustifiably sensationalistic. However, I still continue to provide talks to
select organisations, colleges and churches.
Sarah,
in her deacon’s dalmatic, listens to the author addressing a congregation.
Sarah accompanied me on the final live
television programme [“Pagans,” Central Weekend Television, 30 March
2001]
in the British Isles. It was to be a discussion about the advisability of witchcraft
and paganism being taught in school classrooms. Sarah explained about the oath
made by some witchcraft initiates to Set-an, which, in her case, was later
revealed by the coven leaders to be Satan. She also told of how some female
members are lured into crime. I raised the spectre of Crowley and how many
would not be witches were it not for this self-confessed drug fiend and
diabolist.
Anthony
~ at the rear ~ waiting to receive the Blessed Sacrament during Mass.
Having worked part-time for me in the
days of the portrait studio in the 1960s, Anthony Hill, like many others, had
long abandoned the fascination he held in his youth with Aleister Crowley and occult mumbo jumbo,
returning to his roots when he was a choirboy at Kilburn Grammar School. It
begs the question: what roots will the children of today have when, if need be,
they seek sanctuary? He and his second wife attended church together where I
was celebrating the Eucharist. Anthony received the Host (the Body of Christ)
from me. It was a defining moment in our relationship along life’s journey. Anthony
had known “Screaming Lord Sutch” at secondary school. Sutch went on to become a
pop star, later notorious for standing as an independent candidate. Few people
will remember that “Lord” Sutch tried to involve himself in the Highgate matter
in the summer of 1970, and was pictured as a consequence on the front page of
the Hampstead and Highgate Express, 7 August 1970. The report largely
concerns the gruesome discovery of the body of a woman in the cemetery exactly
one week earlier. The newspaper also recorded: “Pop singer Sutch was the victim
of actress Carmen Du Sautoy. They are in a film about the daughter of Dracula
and Jack the Ripper combined. ‘Horror intrigues me,’ said Sutch, ambling
between tombstones in his pale lilac tunic and cape. … Mr Sutch is no novice at
horror. For some time it has been part of his stage act. His speciality is
leaping from a blazing coffin.” He was unwisely photographed in immediate
proximity to the afflicted area of the subterranean vaults.
Sutch, who changed his name by deed poll
to “Screaming Lord Sutch, 3rd Earl of Harrow” in the 1960s, went on to fight
more than forty elections as the candidate for the Monster Raving Loony Party,
which he founded in 1963. When his mother died, he became extremely depressed.
Two years later, he committed suicide by hanging himself at his South Harrow
home on 16 June 1999. He was fifty-eight-years-old. The following day, Cardinal
Basil Hume, who I had known personally for nine years, died of cancer at the age
of seventy-six. The very tall, white-haired cardinal was greatly admired
throughout the Catholic community and beyond. The following year witnessed the
untimely death of the television personality Paula Yates whom I had worked
alongside for a Channel Four programme in February 1990. Nothing like her
image, I found her smaller, prettier and rather more troubled. She was quite
moody. Yet there was a gentle and intelligent side to her that did not always
translate via the television screen.
Paula would later make the discovery
that her real father was not the television presenter Jess Yates, but the
Canadian game show host Hughie Green. Resemblance between her and Green was
discernable. Someone telephoned Paula on the morning of 17 September 2000, and
Tiger Lily, Paula’s young daughter, said her mother was asleep. Paula was later
discovered naked, half in and half out of her bed, and a very strange colour.
Coroner Dr Paul Knapman’s verdict was that she had died of non-dependent abuse
of drugs, and was “an unsophisticated taker of heroin.” The 0.3mg of morphine
found in her body would not have been enough to kill her had she been a heroin
addict. That notwithstanding, she had apparently been taking illegal drugs,
including cocaine, for nearly two years before the day she died. Illegal drugs
have wrecked much of modern society. I noticed their availability when I was a
professional photographer and musician throughout the 1960s. Heroin and cocaine
were much less common then, but the abuse of almost any illegal substance was
apparent and growing. Police and politicians nowadays admit that drug abuse is
out of control, and responsible for much of the violent crime the majority of
law-abiding citizens have to endure.
The
author greeted by Anastasia Cooke on behalf of London Weekend Television.
All those wonderful qualities that made
Great Britain attractive to the rest of the world would now seem to have been sacrificed
to meet what is invariably the lowest common denominator. This constant
lowering of standards to appease liberal modernists leaves a radical
traditionalist like myself in the wilderness on most matters. Though I am not a
voice entirely unheard. Not yet.
My calling to the priesthood and
episcopacy alienated a small number of so-called “admirers” who reacted with
hostility, even malice; but for me it was unavoidable in the morally bankrupt
times I found myself. Degenerate behaviour and its attendant drug dependency,
still in its infancy in the 1960s, has now become endemic throughout all strata
of society. Absent is any political or even mainstream church leadership with
the courage to address this continuing slide by returning to traditional spiritual
values.
* *
*
Christianity came to Britain in the
first century and is the essence of our civilisation. Lose it and we lose
everything. Tertullian of Carthage (circa 208) said that the Christian
Church of his day “extended to all the boundaries of Gaul, and parts of Britain
inaccessible to the Romans but subject to Christ.” Eusebius of Cæsaria (circa
260-340) in his Demonstratio Evangelica said: “The Apostles passed
beyond the ocean to the Isles called the Brittanic Isles.” Sabellius (circa
250) revealed: “Christianity was privately confessed elsewhere, but the first
nation that proclaimed it as their religion and called it Christian, after the
name of Christ, was Britain.” Polydore Vergil, court antiquary to henry VIII
and a foremost scholar of his day, wrote: “Britain partly through Joseph of
Arimathea, partly through Fugatus and Damianus, was of all kingdoms first to
receive the Gospel.”
Gildas, the British historian, in the
sixth century, wrote: “We certainly know that Christ, the True Son, afforded
His Light, the knowledge of His precepts to our Island in the last year of Tiberius Cæsar.”
Elsewhere he affirmed that “Joseph introduced Christianity into Britain in the
last year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar.” Tiberius died on 16 March AD 37,
which supports the traditional date for St Joseph of Arimathea mission to
Britain of AD 36. Britain was outside the Roman Empire, as the Claudian
invasion did not occur until AD 43.
Martin of Louvain, in his Disputoilis Super
Dignitatem Anglis it [sic] Gallioe in Councilio Constantiano (1517),
recorded: “Three times the antiquity of the British Church was affirmed in
Ecclesiatical Councilia. 1. The Council of Pisa, AD 1417. 2. The Council of
Constance, AD 1419. 3. Council of Siena, AD 1423. It was stated that the
British Church took precedence over all other churches, being founded by Joseph
of Arimathea, immediately after the Passion of Christ.”
On page 87 of The Grail Church, I wrote: “To the native
Celts the Grail Church became known as the British Church; so as to distinguish
it from the Anglo-Saxon English Church. When the Anglo-Saxons adopted Roman
Christianity the British Church receded until it eventually vanished. Yet the
memory of the Holy Grail could not be eradicated; indeed, its symbolic potency
only grew with the passing of time.”
The year I began my personal quest for
the Holy
Grail ― 1977 ― is also believed by some scientists to be
the pivotal point for mankind from which there is no turning back. The effect
of global warming is one of many symptoms of a doomed planet. It is further
thought that the search for another planet where sanctuary might be found is
unlikely to materialise in time. Hence a small number of scientists are now
turning their attention from space travel to time travel. But the prospect of
wandering in time is no more attractive than the prospect of being lost in
space, I would have thought? The real journey is one that lies within each of
us.
The 1977 quest led to me eventually
finding that gnarled piece of olive wood known as the Nanteos Cup. Like Wagner in 1855, whose
discovery of the relic inspired his opera Parsifal, I sought the Nanteos
Cup in the hope of resolving whether or not this was indeed that venerated
vessel wherein the first Eucharist was celebrated. Yet the intervening two decades
has taught me that such a spiritual journey is within oneself; that these
riddles are seldom, if ever, resolved by viewing an artefact deemed sacred.
The last Abbot of Glastonbury, Richard
Whiting, entrusted the wooden Cup to his monks. They fled with the vessel to
escape the appalling vandalism wrought by Henry VIII where it remained
temporarily safe in the remote, now ruined, Cistercian Abbey of Strata Florida
in Wales. When the King’s men extended their search, the monks fled again with
the Cup and took refuge in the isolated house of Nanteos, which was owned by
farmers some seventeen miles from the Abbey. The final words on the breath of
the last remaining monk as he died were that the resident Powell family should
guard the Holy Cup “until the Church shall claim her own,” which, in a sense,
now it has.
The Nanteos Cup, as it was now called,
remained at the house for over four centuries. It remained in the house, as
stipulated in the Powell family will, when the estate passed to Mrs Elizabeth
Miryless, a daughter of the late Mr Powell’s cousin. The new owner became a
devout believer in the healing properties of the Cup and, for a period, met
with countless appeals for water that had been left to stand in the vessel. One
week witnessed at least one and a half thousand pleas via correspondence
from far and wide. The strain became too much, and in 1967 Elizabeth Mirylees
sold Nanteos House and moved to a secret address in Herefordshire. The Cup, now
pitted with teeth marks from over-zealous pilgrims, darkened with age, and
reduced to one third of its original size would at one time have measured five
inches in diameter at the top and about three inches in depth, tapering to a
base about two and a half inches across.
Neither I, nor anyone else, can know whether
this is the holy vessel of the Last Supper, but reports of amazing cures are
real enough. And a foremost authority on Palestinian archaeology, Sir Charles
Marston, who travelled to Nanteos in 1938, would not dismiss the possibility
that it was the Holy Grail. Such a quest, in truth, has no end. Perhaps we must
remain uncertain about matters of this kind? Faith must be sufficient; not
faith in an ancient relic ― but faith in what it represents, ie
union with God, in the certain knowledge that the only way to the Father is
through the Son.
Three years before the end of the last
century, the Nanteos Cup (and the healing ministry that has sprung from it) was
revealed to the world in a British television programme, and an American
documentary. The healing properties attributed to the Cup via cloths
anointed with oil and water given to the afflicted persons were examined and
discussed in both television films. The cures would ultimately be the effect of
the Holy Spirit (Acts 19: 11-12), and the phenomenon of Divine Healing.
The American documentary is regularly transmitted on a channel somewhere in the
United States, or another part of the world. Every week requests are made for
prayer cloths that have been anointed and blessed in the Nanteos Cup. Any healing
that takes place is a gift of God’s grace made available to us through the
atoning ministry of Jesus Christ who suffered and “Himself took away our
infirmities, and carried away our diseases” (Matthew 8: 17); “He Himself
bore our sins in His body on the cross … for his wounds you were healed” (1
Peter 2: 24). To “heal” simply means to recover.
The Holy Grail was considered to be a
relic of inestimable value as the Cup of the Last Supper that was later used by
St Joseph of Arimathea to collect a few drops of the Saviour’s blood.
Apocryphal writings credit St Joseph with possession of the Cup. “Cardinal
Baronius, curator of the Vatican Library and certainly the most outstanding
historian of the Roman Catholic Church, writes in his Ecclesiastical Annals
in reference to the exodus of AD 36: ‘In that year the party mentioned was
exposed to the sea in a vessel without sails or oars. The vessel drifted
finally to Marseilles and they were saved. From Marseilles [St] Joseph [of
Arimathea] and his company passed into Britain and after preaching the Gospel
there, died’.” [The Grail Church, Holy Grail, 1995, page
30.]
Thus the Holy Grail came to the British Isles where, six centuries later, it
went missing. In later legends, as a result of the Holy Grail being lost, the
country was strangely afflicted with large areas becoming an uninhabitable
wasteland. Those who ventured there died. And a sixth century monk named Gildas
wrote a history [Gildæ sapientis de excidio et conquestu Britanniæ] which spoke of
a great famine and disease that rendered the island of Britain virtually
uninhabitable, resulting in mass migration to the Continent. He attributes the
catastrophe to the Britons’ loss of faith. There are parallels with then and
now. A steep decline in moral attitudes and social behaviour, plus, more
significantly, the distortion and loss of faith, makes us ripe for a coming
wasteland. But there is a difference. This time it might be on a global scale.
Perhaps we need to reflect on what he
have allowed to inflict itself on our world, and are continuing to allow, on a
legacy of two thousand years of civilisation under Christian influence. Perhaps
we should examine the corruption that is everywhere; look long and hard into
ourselves; and start to reclaim the lost ground, restore what has been taken,
and return to Christ.
I was born in the closing months of a
terrible world conflict, and have witnessed the world waging war on itself ever
since. Man’s inhumanity to man leaves me convinced more than ever that our only
salvation is in Him who shed His blood for the atonement of our sins. But it
must be to the Christ of the Gospels, revealed through the Word of God, and not
to a distorted image that we look.
The
kiss of peace from the bishops ~ 4 October 1991.
When the precious mitre was placed upon
my head on the feast of St Francis of Assisi in 1991, I already understood that
a crown of thorns was contained within. I said as much in my last UK radio
interview. And for those who make the choice to take up their cross and follow
Him, there begins a journey where space and time is transcended
― a journey that will never taste death.
Mine has been a blessed life through
amazing and certainly defining times for all of mankind. I am especially
blessed to have found Sarah who makes every day a joy. Her love of Creation
― particularly the injured wild animals she takes in to protect and care
for before returning them back to nature healed ― is just one of a myriad
of facets that make her the ideal life partner for me. Her green eyes and
glorious smiles fill my days with all that is delightful; her tenderness and
affection keep me alive and inspired, reminding me constantly of God’s plan for
us on Earth ― to love Him, love one another, and to rejoice in Creation.
This life is a dream from which
death is merely an awakening. Be not afraid . . .
…
Man’s
life is death. Yet Christ endured to live,
Preaching
and teaching, toiling to and fro,
Few
men accepting what He yearned to give,
Few
men with eyes to know
His
Face, that Face of Love He stooped to show.
Man’s
death is life. For Christ endured to die
In
slow unuttered weariness of pain,
A
curse and an astonishment, passed by,
Pointed
at, mocked again
By
men for whom He shed His Blood – in vain?
Christina
Rossetti (1830-1894)
To return to the
contents for the selection of fragments of Seán Manchester’s
unpublished memoir click on book è &
____________________________________________________________
The above text and pictures from Stray Ghosts by Seán Manchester (unpublished memoir) are copyright protected and cannot be reproduced without consent.