Pasg Hapus

I happened to see a programme on TV the other night about St Teilo's church, which was carefully demolished in its home village, and rebuilt at St Fagan's museum. The process took twenty years, and the church was decorated as it might have appeared in around 1520, with wall paintings based on the fragments that had been found in the church, and a beautiful rood screen showing the crucifiction with the life of St Teilo underneath.
The colours glowed - they had taken something derelict and turned it into something beautiful.

When I went into St Mary's church here in Hay today, I had much the same reaction. There is a new rood, hanging from the chancel arch. The colours glow; it's beautiful - as much as anything showing such a terrible method of execution can be.
I got the parish magazine, Way-on-High, and found that the making of the rood had been a real community undertaking. The wood for the cross came from an old pew, and was made by Jumbo. Father John cut out the figures of Jesus, Mary and John. Mandy and Dick paid for all the materials in memory of their son Dick. Christina did the gilding of the haloes, but the main work, the painting, was done by Maggie Denny, who wrote an article about it in the magazine:
"It may only be paint on wood - but it becomes far more than that - every brush stroke a step along a journey accompanied by paryer, pity, sorrow and hope.... It has been a truly wonderful project, both sorrowful and joyful."

Happy Easter