VI
CHAPEL AND CHOIR
Sacristans: A Bickersteth and A Lawes. We welcomed as the new Chaplain the Revd Sarah Atkins who returns to Magdalene having read Theology here 2002–05. She was installed at the first Evensong of the academic year when the Master preached. Also in Michaelmas, Professor Duffy preached about the walls of Jericho, and Dr Michael Thompson, Vice-Principal of Ridley Hall, on Christ the cornerstone. We marked the centenary of the Armistice on 11 November by an exceptional and memorable 11 am ceremony in First Court with the Last Post, as well as the Act of Remembrance at Evensong. The Advent Carol service gave us luminous music and little room to breathe as we squeezed 140 into Chapel. A student-led programme of 24 hours of prayer in Chapel was held in Advent, as well as the Staff and Family Carols. A brass quartet cheered us through the teeming rain on the procession to St Clement’s for our Christmas service. In January, a new icon of Mary Magdalene was placed in Chapel, the generous gift of the Master in honour of our patron and to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Master’s ordination as priest (see frontispiece on p 6). It joins on the East wall our existing icon of the Mother of God of the Passion. In a Chapel which welcomes people of all denominations and of none, these figures point to Christ, the one ‘in whom all things hold together’. The icon writer, Cheryll Kinsley Potter, attended the Evensong when the icon was blessed by the Master and where he began our series on the Beatitudes with ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’. Other preachers included Visiting Fellow Dr Pia De Simone from Milan, Msgr Mark Langham (1979), Dr Elaine Storkey and Revd Jon Canessa, the Bishop of Ely’s advisor for homelessness. The Choir of St Paul’s School sang Evensong near the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul. In the Easter Term, Evensong sermons considered what builds faith, with Professor Boyle (‘doubt’), Mrs Amanda Mukwashi, director of Christian Aid (‘love and service’), the Master (‘Scripture’), Revd Michael Robinson (2005) (‘prayer’), the Dean of Queens’ (‘sacraments’), and Revd Helen Orr (1990) (‘friendship’). Happily, Helen’s father and mother Bishop Simon and Dr Jean Barrington-Ward accompanied her back to the Chapel which has so long enjoyed their friendship. The Monks of Douai sang Vespers and gave us a taste of the Benedictine worship on which the College was founded. The popularity of regular sung Compline shows appreciation for this tradition of communal prayer endures. The season of Easter was kept in some style since Easter Day fell immediately before the start of Term. We held a late-night Good Friday meditation and on Easter Eve gathered for a new fire in the Master’s garden and vigil and Communion in a packed Chapel. Fr Alex Ross from St Clement’s preached and its Choir sang. This was the first service for the new paschal candle-holder ingeniously designed and 3D-printed by Mr Riche and which is placed magnetically for Easter on the Stephen Branch memorial stand. 35
