St. Paul’s Cathedral

So when we were in London a couple of weeks ago, we happened to be there on a Sunday morning, which wasn’t too much of a coincidence, since it was the weekend.

I’ve been wanting to go to St. Paul’s Cathedral for a while. We went to see it in 2006, but we weren’t allowed to see the whole thing, just the entryway basically. This time, though, we weren’t just going for a tour. We were going for a Sung Eucharist service… which was even better.

The cathedral is laid out like a cross (of course), and there’s a huge dome above the crossing. The congregation sat in huge semicircles right in the middle of the crossing, so the huge dome was just above you. The gospel reading for that day was the Transfiguration, and the priest gave a really respectable sermon. I was quite surprised, she was very sincere and it seemed like she had worked a while putting the sermon together.

Since St. Paul’s is a protestant cathedral (Church of England), we took communion, which was really cool. In many of the cathedrals we have been to, we would be unable to take communion (since we’re not Catholic).

The coolest part of the service was probably the recessional. At then end, all the clergy and choir members file out first, but the choir keeps singing, so you can hear all the different parts of the choir singing as the different sections go by.

It was beautiful and refreshing.

And then when it was over, we went across the street and ate at Gourmet Burger Kitchen and had the Valentine’s day set price menu (don’t ever say I don’t buy you nice things, Candice). It was beautiful and refreshing, too.