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Good morning.

Birthplace of Mozart and internationally renowned for its spectacular baroque architecture, Salzburg is without doubt a most beautiful city. It’s also during festival time known as the ‘Stage of the World’ and I was fortunate enough to experience some of its glamour last month at the start of the Summer Festival. We enjoyed concerts in two magnificent venues – the huge Cathedral and a theatre built into the rocky side of a quarry which had previously been a Riding School. They call it the ‘Felsenreitschule’ and I must admit I instantly recognised it as the film setting for the final concert of the Trapp Family Singers before they escape the Nazi authorities and flee over the mountains.

Now ‘Sing-along-a-Sound-of-Music’ isn’t going to be everybody’s favourite way of spending an evening in the theatre but I recall one performance back at home which drew lots of people. There were, as always, plenty of nuns (of both sexes) sitting in the stalls as well as a smattering of gentlemen sporting lederhosen - and dotted around, a few brown paper packages tied up with strings. Party poppers were let off when Maria and Captain von Trapp finally acknowledge their love with a kiss by the moonlit lake. People stamped and cheered in their excitement! But there were some quite profoundly intense moments too during the evening, reinforcing for me just how powerfully songs from musicals can affect people spiritually. As Maria herself puts it: ‘Somebody kind who touches your mind will suddenly touch your heart. When that happens, after it happens, nothing is quite the same.’

None of us knows exactly what the day ahead holds. We’ll meet people and address situations that were planned and expected. But we’ll also be surprised by things that we couldn’t possibly have foreseen. Lord, make us ready maybe to recognise you in them – and to respond.

Amen.