Of flowers and booths

Bouquets in our
chapel today

It was a lovely Sunday morning ... a rare event. Though it's my turn to lead prayers, presided at community Mass and serve at table, it started off well because no one came for Mass this morning except our 3 sisters, 1 seminarian and 2 religious from Ecce Homo convent. That's because at 5pm today there's a golden jubilee celebration and everyone is going for that. Celebrating Sunday Mass for 5 people means I can preach easily without the tension of having to preach in front of professors and dottorandi. And I celebrate always in english and not italian. I kept the homily nice and short in my typical style ... 5 points in 5 phrases. The sisters sang hymns in english and we finished Mass happy and refreshed. I didn't have to celebrate the armenian Mass today.

Booths along Jaffa street

The weather was very pleasant and the seminarian and one of our students, a filipino priest, wanted to go and check out guitars and harps and asked me to accompany them. I loved to ... but I first had to go to the florist to order 7 bouquets of flowers for our chapel for the golden jubilee Mass. It costs over 500 shekels and I had to pick them up at 3.30pm. Then crossing 2.5km from East Jerusalem to West Jerusalem, I met up with the other two and walked another good 1.5km to the music shop. They made their enquiries and tried out a few instruments. They are very good guitarists. But they didn't buy any though. Instead we walked down Ben Yehuda Mall and had brunch at New Deli which is a sandwich place. It was a nice occasion to relax and chat and we all felt good. That's what Sunday should be. Along the way we saw lot and lots of sukkoth (booths or huts) on the streets. Each restaurant and eatery has one. That's because jews for the 8 days of the feast of Sukkoth (Tabernacles is the usual name but it's a very odd term. It actually means booths or huts), jews must eat their meals in them.

In the afternoon I had to go with our doorman's son riding on his tuk-tuk (golf cart) to collect the 7 bouquets of flowers. 3 of them were quite large and 4 were very small for the 4 side altars. I was rather pleased that the florist did a good job. But riding on a golf cart on the main road with 3 boxes of flowers and one on my lap, going down and up the Kidron Valley was not at all fun.

I on the other hand am getting better. I had a fever attack during Mass but only that one time. My cough is less violent and on the whole I feel much better than yesterday. Maybe a work-less, relaxed Sunday with good company is what I need to get well.

On the homefront, reports are coming in that Jewish extremist settlers have attacked Israeli soldiers.  https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-5610159,00.html?fbclid=IwAR0oDEJKZFwUJ26CyUWmCJHI1u4DZcrYsZEm9tFXEBqpv6-2PYaVneASWSc