Mitteleuropa

This is the month I should have been have been in sunny Central Europe enjoying the wonderful hospitality and company of my dear friends Tim and his wife Pip, and Tim's opera-singing cousin Martin, all originally from Dunedin. For reasons of health (perhaps a tear-stained entry on the subject at a later date) I have decided to remain at home until various physicians and medical experts have worked out what to do with me. It was my particular desire to go to Prague again, one of the most beautiful cities imaginable, which I last saw more that thirty years ago in the bad old days of Dr Husak's regime. I remember standing beside the monument to Jan Hus and saying to myself, "I would love to see this place again when it's free - but it never will be in my lifetime." But of course, now it is.

I went to what was then the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia twice for a holiday, once before I was ordained, and once afterwards. Before the first visit I didn't want to to go to Czechoslovakia at all, but I didn't have a car, and couldn't drive, while Bernard, my fellow ordinand, both did and could. And he had studied in Brno in 1968 during the Prague Spring, and wanted to see the country again. I would have preferred the south of France (hot!) but to Mitteleuropa we went all the same.

Like good little ordinands we kept up the Daily Office, so when we (actually I) got lost in Prague and missed meeting back at the car at the appointed time (which meant in turn that we missed mass at St Andrew's Church at 4pm) I suggested we walk down the road to the Carmelite Church of Our Lady of Victories to say evensong quietly in the back pews. I knew that this Church was also the home of the celebrated image of the Divine Infant of Prague (copied all over the world) but I didn't realise that once inside the building you could cut the atmosphere of prayer and holiness with a knife. I was somewhat overwhelmed.

I was also greatly impressed by the number of young adults pursuing their devotions on their knees. No higher education for them in People's Czechoslovakia, no good well-paying jobs for them to look forward to! No indeed! In fact, later in a small shop in the grounds of the Castle, as soon as the rather handsome-looking middle-aged woman behind the counter realised that we were from what was then "the West" (actually Prague is further west than Vienna) she started almost shouting (in English) that she had been the editor of a metropolitan newspaper, and that her son - who had a PhD in the sciences - was merely a night watchman in the countryside, and that we should tell everyone as soon as we got home. Needless to say, we didn't know how to react to this sudden outburst, and just felt embarrassed and depressed.

But as I say, I had considerable respect for the worshippers in the Carmelite Church. I was also impressed by the ceiling, which had a number of coats of arms painted on it. One of these was that of the Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary and Bohemia - the third of these being the present Czech Republic. The last emperor and king was Charles of the House of Austria - which is how John Paul the Second described him when he beatified him only a few years ago in the presence of the members of the Imperial family, including the late sovereign's eldest son and heir the Archduke Otto, aka Dr Otto Habsburg, now aged ninety-five and the longest serving member of the European parliament when he retired a few years ago.

Looking at Kaiser Karl's arms on the Carmelite ceiling I remembered that his widow, Kaiserin Zita, was still alive in exile in Switzerland (she lived until 1989). So during this one woman's lifetime, the citizens of Prague had endured two world wars, one great depression, years of Nazi tyranny, and decades of Soviet dictatorship. I rather think we have been let off lightly by comparison.

Despite the fact that it wasn't advertised on the list of Sunday services at the cathedral, mass began (in incomprehensible Czech) at an altar halfway down the right hand side of the nave, below the shrine of the Divine Infant. Naturally, we presented ourselves (gratefully) for communion. But clearly we would not have made particularly good undercover agents during the cold war which was on at the time, since the priest who said, "The Body of Christ" to everyone else in incomprehensible Czech (all those consonants!) said "Corpus Christi" to us!

After Bernard and I were priested and in our first parishes, we went again to Prague, and on Sunday went to mass in the Carmelite Church once more. This time a wonderful seventeeth-century mass for double choir and orchestra (the organ substituting for the latter) resounded from the choir loft. And, lo and behold, the very same priest who had celebrated on our last visit presided at the high altar.

Since the velvet revolution the Church has been returned to the Discalced Carmelites, and would appear to be doing good business, if I can put it like that. But I was certainly impressed by the witness of the priest and people who kept the faith in the bad old days - and I can't help wondering what they would have thought if they had known that in 1989 President Havel and his government would begin their reign by attending the Cathedral in state for Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.