Oxford Cathedral

Oxford Cathedral, which also serves as a kind of private chapel for the staff and students of Christ Church, a University of Oxford college, I was able to tick off this week. One of the smallest cathedral churches in the land (which seems to be all quire and no nave) it is also one of the most expensive, taxing the city’s many tourists £21 to enter its cloisters and admire its ceilings. Built for a pre-existing priory and dedicated to the Saxon saint Frideswide, Henry Tudor tolerated its survival on account of its already being earmarked to serve the new college. It was among these Norman pillars and Romanesque arches that the two Wesley brothers were ordained as Anglican clergymen.

The cathedral’s chapter house has a number of carved heads all drawing attention to their ears as though reminding those below to listen carefully. Much is spoken within the colleges of Oxford and also within its many churches and chapels; its lecturers, parsons, choral societies and choirs are two-a-penny. How readily are the scriptures, God’s word, preached and heard? Who can differentiate between man’s chords and the Holy Spirit’s whispers? Who will pause to listen?

Hear me now therefore, O ye children, and depart not from the words of my mouth. Proverbs 5:7

A D