Visiting Chester Cathedral, 26th February 2008

Paul and I are ashamed to admit that we had never visited Chester Cathedral before, so we were really looking forward to the evening trip to the Cathedral. The coach left promptly at 5.30pm. In an atmosphere of happy chatter I took the snoozing option. All went well until we reached the edge of Chester city centre, where Hoole Bridge was closed; but we took the diversion and still got to the cathedral in good time.

We were shown directly to the refectory where we would be eating. The food was really good; we did not hear one person say anything negative about it. The service was good too, and you could purchase a glass of wine to have with your meal. Paul had been on the internet getting information about the Cathedral, so we already knew that where we were eating used to be the refectory for the monks all those hundreds of years ago.

While we were having coffee, our guide, Nick Fry, introduced himself to us and gave us some background on the cathedral, and we then accompanied him on the tour. We learned that the cathedral was actually three churches in one! The first church to be built there was in 907AD to house the remains of St.Werburgh. She was a Mercian princess who became a nun and then an abbess. She was noted for her holiness and was associated with miracles of healing.

In 1092 the church became a Benedictine abbey and there was further building work – hence the second church. There were monastic buildings attached – cloisters, refectory, kitchens, dormitory, bakery, brew house, infirmary and wine cellar. We learned the surprising fact that monks were allowed to have up to three servants each! But when they were working on their manuscripts they knelt at tables next to open window frames that had no glass in them, so they were at the mercy of all weathers.

In 1250 there was further building work and what we basically know as the cathedral was born, and this building took about 250 years to complete. In the 1530s Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in a bid to get rid of what he saw as the pesky Catholics (and benefit from their wealth)! Chester was one of the few monasteries to survive, mainly due to the King’s high opinion of the abbey. The abbot was swiftly appointed the first dean of the re-dedicated church, the cathedral for the new Diocese of Chester. In those days the diocese included much of north-west England.

We learned so much about the history of the cathedral, Nick was a good guide and you could tell that he was genuinely interested in what he was telling us – his love for the building was self-evident. This brought the history to life for us. We heard people comment how different it was being there at night when it was quiet, not full of tourists – well, except us! For anyone with an artistic eye there was so much to photograph – the way the light fell on the architecture and the shadows that it cast were fascinating. One or two people were seen taking lots of photographs. There was so much to see that we wished that we had longer to look around and have Nick explain so much more to us.

We were told that George Frideric Handel was on a journey to Dublin for the first public performance of his newly written Messiah. He was delayed in Chester for about three weeks due to bad weather – nice to know some things never change. While there, he asked the choirmaster if he could put together a scratch choir so that he could run through his piece. One stipulation he had was that the choir members had to be able to sight-read. The choir assembled and the sing-through began, but the bass could not cope. Handel confronted the man, who replied, “I can sight read – just not at first sight”! So although it was not the first public performance of Messiah it was sung for the first time in Chester Cathedral.

We ended the tour in the Lady Chapel with a quiet act of Compline, led by Martin, with a meditation specially written and delivered by Canon Trevor Dennis. It was the perfect end to a perfect evening. It has certainly whetted our appetite to visit the Cathedral in the daylight, and if any further trips are organised, we would wholeheartedly recommend them to you.

Pam Southcombe

This place has fallen silent in the evening dark of this Lenten day. Even the candles lit by those who came to pray, to bear in fragile flame their own needs or longings, their guilt or fear, their pleas to God for loved ones, missing, sick, departed, even those are burned out now, while Mary and her small child, taking his first steps and looking up to her for reassurance, these are left to carry the prayers into the heart of God.

The place is still now. The crowds who came for the Quaker tapestry are gone, and the notes of the organ marking the end of Evensong have long since died in this sacred air. The choristers have had their tea by now, finished their homework, the younger ones already fast asleep in bed. In past years ravens would have been building their nest, high up on the tower, knitting together twigs snapped from the trees below, bridging the wide gap between gargoyle and ledge, lining the circle of the nest bowl with sheep's wool brought from the fields, ringing it round with yellow strands of willow carried from the tree in the Bishop's garden -a small masterpiece of engineering, a safe place for eggs to be laid and for young to grow to fledging. But the ravens are not here anymore, and even if they were, they would have ended their day's work by now, fallen to keeping silent vigil on the parapet.

Sometimes the wail of sirens penetrates the thick stone of the walls, as ambulance, police car, or fire engine races through the city streets to remind us that not all is well and bid us pray for those in sudden need. But in between this place keeps its silence.

It is more than an absence of noise. there is a deeper silence to be found here, one that remains on the busiest of days, even when hundreds of children fill the air with their excited chatter or their song, a quiet that is the very silence of God. God treads softly here, and if we keep still for a moment, or two or three, we will hear, we will hear!

Others keep us company. Behind us, high on the painted roof of the Quire, the angels are gathered with their instruments, a veritable orchestra, straight from heaven, and closer to our backs the tiny figure of St Werburgh stands in her shrine, to mark the spot where so many pilgrims came to pray, amidst the singing of the monks.

Above our heads, carved in intricate bosses, down the middle of the vault, are a Trinity, God the Father, bearing his Son in his arms, still hanging on his cross, with the dove of the Holy Spirit alighted on the cross's arm; a Mary and her child, also, her double curving body protected by angels sending incense up to heaven from their swinging thuribles; and then, close to the shrine of the saint, murder, the slaughter of St Thomas Becket - four soldiers plunging in their swords, while he stands at the altar and holds aloft the consecrated host, the sign of the presence of God, the very heart of the Eucharist.

It is a shocking image to find in this quiet, holy space. Yet there is one more shocking still, that one of the Son of God crucified; God himself flogged, hammered to twisted wood, the most degrading death the Romans knew, kept for the lowest of the low and those who dared defy their power. Crucified naked, on a post six or seven feet tall, thorns biting into his head, fighting for breath: that was where we left our God. The angels covered their faces from the sight, the swirling galaxies stopped, and the burning sun went out and plunged us into dark; the earth shivered, shook in the cold of that fearful death. It was as if God had died. It was as simple, as shattering as that.

Yet see, yet see, there is another cross here, standing in the middle of the altar table, its silver turned side on, so you can hardly see it. Look it is empty! Have they taken him away for burial? It is an urgent question and laden with our fear, for we know the Romans often left the bodies hanging on the crosses they had made, so the wild animals and the birds could feast themselves and finish the careful degradation.

They did take him down; they gave him burial in a rich man's tomb, and the women came to honour him, anoint his body and make him smell sweet to high heaven. Yet that is not why the cross here no longer bears his body. the spices and perfumes the women brought were not necessary. They did not find his corpse. They found nothing in the tomb, except angels. They came for death, and stumbled into heaven.

Yet they did not recognize where they were, until they got beyond the angels and met their friend again, and knew him, for the first time, as their Lord and their God.

The marks of the nails and spear were still upon him. He met them as a limping, wounded God. They had never known or dreamed of such a thing, but then no-one else had, either.

This is the God we must find again this Lent, find within touching distance, as Mary of Magdala and Thomas did, and when we do, we will know ourselves loved, embraced, held tight against the world's cruelties, and we will have the spirit, the energy to help God build his kingdom here on earth.

This was the meditation that Canon Trevor Dennis prepared specially for the visit of members of Norbury Church to Chester cathedral on 26th February, 2008.

Trevor Dennis