Monthly Archives: March 2010

“It is our whole faith that by His own death Christ changed the very nature of death, made it a passage – a ‘Passover,’ a ‘Pascha’ – into the Kingdom of God, transforming the tragedy of tragedies into the ultimate victory.”  Alexander Schmemann

Tall palm fronds – twelve feet? – rise on either side of the high altar, reaching up the brick apsidal wall.  They are signs of hope, as green often is, amidst the swathes of purple.  For Lenten purple still drapes the crucifix, the tall candlesticks, the Madonna and Child.  The processional cross too is hidden, and as the clergy and acolytes step toward the altar amidst clouds of incense, we recall the donkey stepping toward the gates of Jerusalem, the City of David, two thousand years ago, a humble animal carrying our humble God, parting the sea of humanity, the ocean of welcoming palms, heading toward the proud gates of the proud city.  The crowd would soon change, Christ knew.  Soon they would would condemn Him, acclaim His death before Pilate, taunt Him along the Way of the Cross, as foretold.

Today, Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, is a day that begins the recalling of the great action of God among us: the conquering of death, the transformation of death to passover, pascha (Easter in the West), to a passing into the Kingdom.  Death vanquished by death; Christ is the Paschal Lamb, the Passover Lamb.

Stacks of smaller palms are blessed and given out, and we process around the church, singing All glory, laud, and honor/To thee, Redeemer King!  To whom the lips of children /Made sweet hosannas ring…, waving our palms, led by our children.  We walk the aisles, together, a family of God, linked by time and eternity, as we move toward our own passovers, our own crossings into the Kingdom.

Are we ready for our own paschas, our own Easters?  We examine our hearts, confess our sins, forgive our brothers and sisters, ask their forgiveness.  We have done things we should not have done and left undone things we should have done.  We say these words together, into the air of the nave, and the incense carries them to the tabernacle.  Our priest, imbued with the authority of two thousand years of Apostolic Succession, gives us absolution, frees us from our mortality, grants us our own passover into the Kingdom.

The Palm Sunday liturgy continues.  We hear the words of Scripture, incarnate with Christ himself.  We hear the words of the sermon, the interpretation of those words, a clarifying based on the promptings of the Holy Spirit weaving through the Church.  We offer the Mass, and in the sacred liturgy are forgiven, freed of ourselves to become ourselves now offered, souls and bodies to God.  Soon, we see, He offers Himself back to us, as He does in each Mass, as He becomes a mystical part of the bread and the wine, and we consume Him.  In the Eucharist itself we pass over, we experience pascha.  We enter His Kingdom, part the veil of the tabernacle and unite with God through Christ.  The Kingdom is now, not of this world, but granted through the matter of this world.

We enter Holy Week, a time of reflection, and of participation in the greatest drama of all history. We fast and pray.  We recreate that history in these hours and days as we move toward Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper.  We follow Christ to the Garden, to the trial, to the Way of the Cross.  We pause there on Good Friday and mourn for ourselves, our world.  Holy Saturday is silent with waiting.  In this way we, His Body, prepare for Easter, for Pascha.

The giant candlesticks framing the tabernacle were draped in purple, like funereal palls.  The tabernacle too was tented in purple, and the crucifix above was veiled in purple as well.  I looked to the left of the chancel, and there, also, the sweet Madonna and Child were covered, but the bank of votives still burned bright.

The honest morning light fell through skylights upon the violet swathes and the red carpet as though saying, “See what is happening. Pay attention.  Do not turn away.”

Today is Passion Sunday, a day which reminds the Church that the Body of Christ is entering the last weeks of Lent and the coming of Holy Week.  It is a time to recall, as part of His Body, His Passion, the last weeks before His death and resurrection.  Passion comes from the Latin passio, meaning suffering, and Christ’s passion is often defined as the union of love and suffering.  As I gazed on the purple drapes, I wondered about suffering.  And I wondered about love.

For it was God’s immense love that redeemed us, continues to redeem us.  Today it is God’s immense love that visits us through His Body, the Church, in the sacraments and in the parish family.  It was that love, and the suffering inherent in love borne out in willing sacrifice, that walked the path to Calvary so that we might live.

And not only live in eternity, but live today.  Live in the Resurrection by living in His love in the here and now.  How do we do this?  Through the Church.

I looked about the nave at my sisters and brothers kneeling in the pews.  We, like every family, and all of mankind, are a dysfunctional lot, full of petty jealousies, sullen secrets, and powerful egos.  But a sacramental river runs through us, washing us clean as we confess our sins, receive absolution, and partake of the Eucharist.  With every Mass we are redeemed again, to love one another better, with greater humility, with greater sacrifice of our own wills.

We walk with Christ the Way of His Cross, for it is a familiar path.  Each day of our lives is barbed with the little pains of love.  To escape these is to withdraw from life, to hide from others, to be alone.  Our Way of the Cross lies in the minute minutes of our time here, in the everyday bits of our hours.

The Church, I have found to my utter delight, integrates all of this – our way through time with His Way of the Cross.  It pulls together the disparate strands that threaten to unravel our souls, and weaves a fine fabric.  In the pulling, in the weaving, we become resurrected creatures, creatures of the morning light, unafraid of seeing.  We pay attention as never before.

This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday.  We shall listen for His knock as he enters the gates of Jerusalem, as we begin Holy Week, the Way to Resurrection.

Visit us at Saint Peter’s Anglican Church, 8 & 10 Mass, 6013 Lawton, Oakland; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/
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Today, crimson roses, indeed blood-red, framed the purple-tented tabernacle on the purple-draped altar in St. Peter’s Church.  Today is Rose Sunday, a break in the somber tones of Lent, a day also called LaetareSunday, meaning Rejoice Sunday.

Recalling that this week we celebrate the Feast of St. Patrick (387-493), we sang “St. Patrick’s Breast-Plate,” a vigorous and moving hymn based on Patrick’s prayer, beginning with the line, “I bind unto myself today/ The strong Name of the Trinity…” and ending with the intimately delightful “Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me . . .”.   We sang, the organ booming, as the procession, led by the thurifer throwing out clouds of incense, followed by the torchbearers and crucifer, then the celebrant, acolytes, and assisting clergy, moved up the aisle confidently, joyously, steadily to the altar where Christ was mysteriously, mystically present in the Reserved Sacrament.

The Epistle and Gospel brought us back to Lent and its true nature, lessons themed with God’s grace, our reliance on him.  Our Lenten disciplines, our rule, our fasting and abstinence, our assigned tasks, our good preacher explained, are nothing without grace.  We do not earn points, but rather prepare ourselves to receive God’s grace.  As we prepare to receive him in the Eucharist by taking part in the liturgy, the “work of the people,” just so we prepare for Easter with our Lenten discipline.

Two sacraments, we believe, are necessary for salvation: Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist.  In each, God’s grace pours upon us.  We are healed of our wounds, forgiven our sins, and given life eternal.

Time passes and we journey through Lent.  This morning we moved our clocks forward, watching time disappear before our eyes.  Our own lives move forward as well, to their inevitable death, to a passage to a greater life, the fulfillment of this one.

We journey toward the blood-red cross and the rose-filled resurrection.  We prepare for Grace to be poured upon us, now and then.  We are transformed by Love, the love of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  We give thanks for St. Patrick, who speaks to us today, sixteen hundred years after he brought the good news of salvation to Ireland.

For Patrick’s original prayer, see:http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm
For the hymn (#268, The 1940 Hymnal, Church Hymnal Corp) see:http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/i/i024.html

It’s seems like spring in the Bay Area today.  The air carries a lovely lightness, as though the cold had been somehow heavy.  The cherry and plum trees have blossomed, as they often do in late February, and new growth is working through the shrubbery about our house.  We’ve had plenty of rain this year, and the hills are the green of Tuscany in May, a soothing green of promise, happy to the eye.

And Lent calls us, even as the days do truly lengthen, calls us to prepare for Easter.

I’m working slowly on my additional memory work for the season, John 1:1-14, allowing the words to move into my soul, become part of me. In him was life, and the life was the light of the men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.  I love that this is the Gospel for Christmas Day, when the word did indeed become incarnate.  I’ve revived earlier pieces learned in other Lents, golden melodies heard more clearly each year: Psalm 139, the Ash Wednesday Collect, the Te Deum.  We move through Lent, out of the dark and into the light.

Darkness and light.  Today at Saint Peter’s the Epistle (Ephesians 5:1) was about walking as children of light by obeying God’s commands, that with Christ’s light this is possible.  The pairing Gospel story (Luke 11:14) tells of Christ casting out demons, a true exorcism.  Our good Father Pomroy explained that in the early Church, the Lenten season was a period of instruction for catechumens leading to their baptism on Easter Eve. Only after baptism could they partake in the mysteries of the Mass.  On the first and third Sundays of Lent, evil spirits were cast out as part of this formation.  Remnants of those days of exorcism remain in today’s baptismal liturgy when the priest asks: “Do you denounce the devil and all his works…”  This slow revelation of the mysteries of the Mass was calleddisciplina arcana, or secret teaching.

Exorcism, demons, darkness.  Do demons exist today?  I believe they do, taking many forms, and always seeking a secure place in my own little heart.  How do I exorcise them?  How do I shine light on them to make them scatter?  I cannot do it on my own.  I can only say yes to Christ, allow him to wash me clean; allow him to live within me.

And to say yes is to receive him in the Eucharist, a mystery those catechumens knew so long ago.  Through the communion of believers, baptized into the Church over two thousand years, we all partake of a great host of light.

I left Saint Peter’s this morning, renewed, cleansed, en-lightened, having swept and brightened the dark corners of my soul.  I stepped out into the nearly spring day, the sun warm, the newly green leaves rustling.  The world, once again, had been reborn.  I had been reborn.