Fr Neil Chatfield reflects on the Ordinariate Festival 2026 at Christ the King, Eastbourne

It has only been after everyone had left that there was time to reflect. A number of us had spent so much time planning the Festival that, during it, I was mostly trying to make sure everything was happening in a reasonably organised manner. And yet, despite all the busyness, I was left with a profound impression of what it means to belong to, and be a part of, the mystical Body of Christ.

This year had an added aspect for me: people came into “our” space and place of worship. My time as parish priest here hasn’t always been easy. One can doubt every decision when changes are met with people leaving, and a barrage of criticism and disapproval. So the fact that people were saying how beautiful the church was took me by surprise. Christ the King certainly isn’t a classically designed church; it very much comes from the modernist, experimental 1960s. But within it there are corners and moments of encounter with something beautiful that speaks of God: the Lady Chapel, the painted sanctuary ceiling, the baldacchino. I am more convinced than ever, after this Festival, that our buildings can help or hinder people in the search for God. Our buildings literally speak theologically to us, even if this is felt rather than articulated.

People were also commenting on the warm welcome they had received. However much I’d like to take credit for that, it was the gathered community as a whole: friends made over a number of years, and newcomers who became new friends. Was everything perfect? Absolutely not. There were many things that could have been done better. But we were a people who were happy to move in the same direction.

During the World Cup this summer, one of the pundits made a more political than sporting comment, something like, “How wonderful it is to see all these different cultures being able to get along with each other.” I agreed, but I suspect for very different reasons. The World Cup is a festival in which a multitude of cultures express something of their unique character, and that is only possible because they all, more or less, sign up to the rules of football. It would be chaos if some turned up to play by the rules of rugby, tennis or golf.

The Ordinariate Festival was like that. People came from groups across the country, and even from abroad, and the thing that united this diverse group was the faith of the Church, expressed in a particular way through the Ordinariate. Within that shared faith, we were free to be ourselves: sharing our stories, debating theology, eating, laughing, learning, praying, adoring, confessing, singing Mattins and Evensong, and of course participating in the high feast of the Eucharist.

In March, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith described the Ordinariate’s particular gift as “evangelisation through beauty… not as an end in itself, but insofar as it has the power to lead us to God.” So this year we explored Beauty, Truth and Goodness: in the psalms with Andrew Goldstein, and in sacred art with David Clayton. There was the “wow” moment when we sang the psalms in three different modes at once, the low monotone running underneath the other two, which touched something profoundly spiritual. And there was the challenge to commission sacred art that touches our English Catholic past and speaks to our culture today, a culture starved of beauty, truth and goodness. This, surely, is part of our mission.

But the final element that made the Festival such an incredible experience was the gathered people of God. It was like the final piece of the jigsaw falling into place. We had the liturgy, the music, the art and the sacred space, and the children of God completed the picture. I had moments of wonder at so much of what was going on, from the obvious spiritual practices to the ongoing hubbub of people talking to each other about everything and nothing.

In this manifestation of the Church, I felt I glimpsed something of the vision of Heaven: a foretaste of the hope we all long for, and yearn one day, by the grace of God, to embrace completely. In the gathering together of the beautiful, broken and odd people that we are, a truth was revealed that, as Lumen Gentium says: “All men are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and toward whom our whole life strains.”