VERSION|0.5.1|SUBJECT|Rev Canon Dr Alan Billings, an Anglican priest in Sheffield  |CONTENT|[b]Rating[/b] 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

[url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap130213.html][img=images/2013/02/pic130213.jpg popup=false float=right][/url]The Pope has retired. I'm sure he has realised that we all grow more fallible with age.

As a retired priest myself, I'm all too well aware of the difficulties of old age. There is the difficulties with mobility, the waning attention spa... the tendency to reminisce about the good old days when everything was so much better than it is today.

Cardinal Newman, one of the worlds great theologians, remembered for his great theology, is greatly admired by the soon to be ex-Pope. He wrote a hymn called [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZzKLZITZ0Y]Lead Kindly Night[/url]. It's a lovely old hymn, the kind of hymn that everyone used to know in the good old days when people like me were thought to be relevant.

It's Ash Wednesday you know, which is just as relevant.

I can fill in a a little time by quoting from that hymn. 

"O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone,"

There, that's a nice bit. Another nice bit is "And with the morn those angel faces smile, which I Have loved long since, and lost awhile!"

It's all so theological, don't you think?

Like the author of Lead Kindly Light, a lovely old hymn written by a brilliant theologian, I remember the vigorous days of my youth. Oh what it was to be young! To have such confidence, to have to rely on no one, but infirmity and dependency comes upon us all.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01516xs]Listen/Read[/url]|CATEGORIES|82,9|IP-ADDRESS|94.168.119.214|DATE|1360744728|CREATEDBY|admin
