As usual I was ushered in via a side door without having to pay anything (magic cassock again - I'd feel bad about it, but given that I risked my life to part the traffic in it - see previous post - I'm going to go with it again).
I arrived in time to join in the mass, because there's always one being celebrated. It's a kind of holy conveyor belt. Having said that, they did the service really well - very much an act of prayer and worship - but being instantly ushered out by staff afterwards to make way for the next congregation ('Exit now please! Exit now!') killed the mood a bit.
I took communion. I wonder how many non-Catholics do that, right there under the Pope's nose. I suspect thousands. It tickles me a bit that, notwithstanding all our arguments about sharing communion, the sheer press of numbers creates a context where we all end up doing the right thing anyhow: being the church together.
You could spend days here taking it in. But not if you're autistic and surrounded by about a billion other pilgrims, sightseers, visitors and worshippers. Reader, I fled.
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