This episode is a little bit different. I have been sharing with you the reflections which I offered during the first lockdown of 2020, and Easter was a contentious day. We weren't supposed to be in Church. And yet that year was my first year as an Ordained Priest and I really hoped that I could have the opportunity to celebrate my first Eucharist of Easter in Church. And so what follows in this episode is a reading of a reflection which I wrote on the afternoon of the 12th of April 2020: Easter day. It's a reflection which I entitled, "Easter: A Day of Conscience".

[Music} I am Samuel S Thorp and you are listening to a bonus episode of From the Pilgrim Path.

Opening my eyes, I peered at the orange luminescent numbers of the clock: 04:48. Twelve minutes before my unusually early alarm. I lay there waiting as the light glowed brighter before the alarm began it’s happy tune. Silencing it I reached for my phone. Dead. Hasn’t charged. A couple of moments later I’d found an alternative charger but it seemed that I would not be taking it with me today. My wife was awake now and we began to get ready. For the first time in a couple of weeks I pulled on my clerical shirt and clicked the tonsure into place. Hair brushed, suitcase - with stole and lectionary stowed away - waiting by the door my fingers ran through the scale of cassock buttons and I was ready. 05:34 we opened the door and stepped out into the gloomy dawn.
Recently the roads have been much quieter, the sound of traffic has been replaced by a gentle murmur of voices from nearby gardens with sparkles of children laughing and playing. Yet now our footsteps echoed on the tarmac as if we were the only people in town. The birds, though, the birds were singing their chorus of praise. Perhaps the birds sing like this every morning but this morning felt different. Blackbirds and robins seemed remarkably unfussed as we walked past them down the street. Their song layered as if each had their own part to play and knew when to come in and when to bow out. If I were being honest, I would say that they seemed to be praising the Lord. If I were being sentimental, I would say that they seemed to be inviting us to share in their worship.
Walking down into the Triangle we spotted ducks by the road, and Linnea stopped to take a picture but having now sighted the Church I felt compelled to carry on my pilgrim way. My first key found the door unlocked, Tony is already here. Passing around the back of the organ we stepped through to the Vestry to greet him, though from a distance. It’s the first time in nearly three weeks that I’ve seen him unmediated by technology. He was sat at the desk writing out the Register of Services.
Shortly after a rare miracle occured, the Team Vicar arrived having been up and present before 6! We had a chuckle and talked through what was to happen. In essence, we were going to observe the first part of the Easter Vigil as far as the reading, though that would be the Gospel reading, and then we would process to the altar for the Eucharist.
John and Tony vested in Alb and Stole, while I wore the gold set as this would be my first mass of the resurrection as a priest. We gathered in the porch, and my wife took out her phone to take a couple of pictures. Tony encouraged her - this is an historic moment. We began with the prayers leading to the lighting of the paschal candle. I put the pins into the candle, one for each of the wounds of Christ; something I hadn’t anticipated I would find as profound as I did. But then I’ve long had an affinity for the salvific nature of his wounds and a quiet devotion to his side from which sprang forth the waters and blood of the sacraments. John lit the candle for us as Tony, the Deacon, then processed us into the head of the nave and placed it in the stand. Linnea filmed this and so captured his singing of the exultet. It was stunning.
John proclaimed the Gospel of the Lord and we sang our way to the altar: Jesus Christ is Risen today, Alleluia. Tony served, rather than deaconed, as I prepared the table. I stood in front of the gemmed cross, beneath the risen Christ of our East Window, facing west. Tony stood at the north end, John the south, while Linnea was near the bishop’s chair. As so often happens, the sanctus filled me with a sense of awe and the rest of the prayer felt thick with significance. It’s interesting reflecting on it that they didn’t have orders of service. This meant I was able to be slower and simply to pray the liturgy and to rest in the silence as seemed right without a sense of people waiting for me to say the next words on their pages. It’s hard to put into words how the prayer seemed but the fracture seemed to crack through the haze of the last days and bring to clarity that this was indeed happening. 
Communicating myself was as if I were still in the sanctus, and I was intensely mindful of all of the faithful who were not able to join us. I prayed for them as I received the wine, focusing on their faith and longing for God. The others present were communicated in one kind. The planned ablutions I refrained from, realising that we needed to reserve some of the sacrament. Instead, we reflected and I adored Christ in what seemed to be a soft and gentle silence.

Following the post-communion prayers, we sang Thine be the Glory during which we processed to the porch whereupon I opened wide the door, hooking it open. I blessed those present with the words of the liturgy, and then introduced a blessing for the town and our parishes. Turning to face the marketplace words flowed out of me, the exact phrasing of which I am unsure but I acknowledged the times we are in, the uncertainties and the grief which people are experiencing before asking in the light of the resurrection that God would “grant benediction and protection upon this town of Diss, and the parishes of Roydon, Bressingham, North and South Lopham, and Fersfield in the name of +God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit who liveth and reigneth now and forever. Amen.”
In these dark times where we are forced to cower in place, afraid of an invisible enemy it is not for us to surrender to the darkness but for us to assert the light which cannot be overcome, such that the light may shine in the darkness. Unheard by anyone other than the four of us who were present, other than the whole company of heaven, other than the Lord in all his glory, this act of blessing nonetheless was offered and, I believe, connected with the parishes for which we have the cure of souls.
Having heard the Gospel, having celebrated the glorious mystery of the resurrection in the Eucharist and having called for God’s blessings upon those whom we serve, I found myself content within my soul. Tony said wryly, well Samuel will never forget his first Easter Communion. No, I won’t. But I would always have been haunted should I not have done so.
Having spent my life resisting the notion of vocation to the priesthood, I’ve had to embrace it wholeheartedly. Having been ordained, the mantle of service and vows rests with a kind firmness upon my shoulders. I cannot do this but for the grace of God. The vows I’ve made are serious, and cling to the corners of my heart. Someday I shall, as I have recently been warned repeatedly by a humanist friend of mine, be judged by ‘the carpenter’ for my actions today. I am confident of this reality and it is precisely this which has compelled the verse where Paul says: I eagerly hope and expect that I shall in nowise be ashamed of the Gospel but that it may be exalted in my body, whether by my life or by my death. I am not ashamed of the Gospel, indeed I owe my very self and the life I live to this Gospel. The God who has healed my darkest pain and borne my scars upon his shoulders is the God to whom I have the bounden duty and joy to worship at all times and in all places. Put like that the dilemma of obedience became painfully clear. 
Having celebrated today, my heart is resolved quite simply to celebrate (or participate) in an Easter Eucharist each year that I live unless I am physically prevented from doing so by health, circumstance or incarceration. 
My fear had been that by compromising and submitting to not celebrate in Church on this my first Easter as a priest that I should compromise the foundations of my priestly service. Once this commitment becomes conditional, I shall always have to negotiate those conditions. With internal consistency and systemic, tangential interconnectedness being such a feature of my approach to theology and life in general it seems that to step onto that grey plane would be to step into a slippery slope which could end up anywhere.
May I never lose sight of Christ.
On that day, may this day pass through the fire of his judgement and remain as pure gold, consecrated to his glory. Or may he have mercy on my soul.