At a Concert at St Maurice's

Before the image of Christ crucified, some with heads bowed, we are gathered in happy devotion — to entertainment. A brethren of deliciously unmoved bodies, perhaps all unhampered by prior yields to the cross, brought to the music, as moths to a lit candle. The magnificent altarpiece, a glittering spectacle of baroque majesty, serves  as a mere ornate focal point. Each image, altar and reliquary, intense donations of public reverence and prior devotion, now carry such little weight and affect such little impact, that the venue has little more than a restaurant's ambiance, and certainly not the numinous might of eternal mystery.

Maybe it's the dust, or the mundanity of a concert venue, or the unfamiliarity with the symbolic value of religious currency inherent with such a building — one that has remained upright and been in daily use for one thousand years — for the connection is a weak magnetism, a holiday sigh or a tourist's snap. The habituation of loonies who crawl on their bellies in silent thanks is not the place for honest, gentle and normal folks.

But then something happens: such feelings as these do not spring from supermarkets, banks or sports halls. The unfashionable term 'sanctity' has a hollow ring about it when 20 yards away the beer is poured beneath screens of footy bollocks, but perhaps that is what emerges when an hour or more is spent sitting in contemplation of a baroque altarpiece. The artists may rest in peace, the builders know that their job was well done, for it turned out that the music alone was not enough. Cold buildings with unforgiving pews obviously attract for quite other reasons than mere entertainment and comfort.

We come, we gather, we sit in silent attention, until waves of encored Elgar energy flow around and through us. It is a mystery, a shared experience we take, like our coats, from now into the future: blessed be the devoted, the moths, the candle lighter, the ignorant and the perplexed, the snoozer and the shopping list maker, for theirs is the shared Kingdom of Man, forever and ever, Amen.