Tag Archives: Mass

Gaudete Sunday

Posted on December 14, 2014 | Leave a comment

???????????????????????????????The heavens opened early Thursday morning, and rain poured upon our California soil, slaking the thirst of the earth but soon bursting gutters and filling low places with floodwaters. In drought-plagued California, we didn’t dare complain, but were thankful.

We live in the foothills of Mount Diablo, and while our house is on bedrock, our northern hillside falls steeply into a ravine. Friday morning we noticed part of the fence was missing, and it had taken some of the landscaping with it as it slid to the bottom of the hill. I thought, as I have thought many times, how suddenly nature makes short work of man’s efforts to tame her, shattering our pride.

The earth is drying out now, and this morning we headed for church, bundled up for temps are in the low fifties (cold for us). The skies had changed from threatening to sudden beauty, with white clouds scuttling against brilliant blue patches, the low sun clarifying the air as though trying to fit more light into shorter days.

And in this winter-scape we prepare for the light of the Incarnation, to me always a stunning event, one repeated in a different way on humble altars in glorious Eucharists. It is Advent, and we prepare for Christmas, the coming of the Christ Child, God becoming one of us, with us, Emanuele. We celebrate the love, sacrificial and humble, of a God who loves his creation so much that he would do such a thing, that he would be born in a manger-cave, among animals, to a poor, devout Jewish couple who believed in his angel messengers and obeyed them.

And so, stepping into the warm nave of our parish church, the symbols of the space textured this story of miraculous birth. The Virgin Mary and her holy Child stood to the left, Gospel side, a bank of votives flaming at her feet. Three of the four Advent candles in their bed of greens had been lit (two purples and one rose). The American flag stood proudly, a testimony to our freedom of worship. Against the red brick apsidal wall, the white marble altar was draped in purple, and six tall tapers burned on either side of the purple-tented tabernacle. A crèche set in greenery, to the far right, Epistle side, told the humble story of glory, this huge contradiction, one of many fascinating ones in our faith, of glorious humility. Somehow true glory can only be found, we are told, in true humility. Somehow true joy can only be found in true sacrifice. Somehow the Creator must become part of his creation to save it from itself.

I love Advent III, called Rose Sunday, Gaudete Sunday. We light the rose candle along with the first two purple candles. Today is Gaudete Sunday because of the opening prayer, the Introit: Gaudete in Domino semper, or Rejoice in the Lord always… Rose Sunday is a break in the penitential purple of Advent, and this is the only Advent Sunday we have flowers on the altar. We emphasize the joy of anticipating Christmas rather than the penitence of preparing for Christmas.

In the daily readings of the Morning and Evening Prayer offices, the mood is definitely one of penitence and preparation. Most of the readings have been Old Testament prophecies, warnings, and judgments in Isaiah and the Psalms. We read the early chapters of the Gospel of Mark, of the beginnings of Christ’s ministry, but not the Christmas story, not yet. But most fascinating are the chapters in Revelation, or The Apocalypse, the great vision given to St. John on the Island of Patmos, detailing the end-times, the last days, the Second Coming of Christ.

We have been immersed in these daily prayers, not reflecting the coming of Christ to Bethlehem but reflecting the Second Coming of Christ in Judgment. We are “woken up” with these future realities, these warnings and visions, given a “heads up.” Are we ready for Christ to come? How will we fare when judged? Have we loved enough? Have we cleaned out our hearts to receive him? For he will not enter a cluttered heart fettered with sins, the detritus of selfishness and pride, envy and greed. There will be no room for him in such a heart. We need to make room for him.

So Advent, often called “Little Lent,” reminds us of the four great events, the adventures, to come to us: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell. How will we – our lives – be measured?

This morning I entered the nave of our warm parish church and knelt in a pew, giving thanks for the clergy, the people of the parish, and the freedom to worship. I asked God to clean out my little heart, to remove all the obstacles to his advent in my soul. My gaze fell on the purple-draped tabernacle and knew that this weekly ritual, this rite, would set me right with God. I knew that the habit of confession would serve me well in the time span of my life, would ensure that I have the time of my life, ride the waves of glory in this great adventure. I knew that, encouraged by the words of the liturgy – confession, absolution, the great action of the Mass, Holy Communion – I would unite once again with Christ, in bread and wine placed on my tongue. I knew that each Eucharist prepared my heart and soul, mind and body, for the great Feast of the Lamb that would await me in Heaven. And I wanted to be ready. I wanted as many Eucharistic feasts as I could manage before then, readying my heart and soul. I want to sing with the angels and the saints.

I also love Advent III because we usually practice (after Mass) for the Christmas Pageant. Young and old gather together to portray our story of redemption, beginning with the Fall of Adam and Eve and ending with the Nativity of Our Lord, the beginning of our salvation, the antidote to the Fall. Lessons are read and carols sung. We rehearsed today; next Sunday we don costumes and prayers and wings (I get to be an angel, and yes, even with wings…) We have a five-year old Mary and an eleven-year old Joseph.

The days are wintry and short. We prepare to celebrate Christmas, the year of our Lord, Anno Domini, A.D.  Some of this sense, this pairing of season with humble glory, has been captured by the poet Christina Rossetti:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

 

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

 

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

 

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

 

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

 Christina Rossetti (1830-1895), “In the Bleak Midwinter”

 

 Yes, Advent is a time to give him our hearts: clean, ready, and open.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Focusing on God

Posted on June 22, 2014 | Leave a comment

I’ve been sitting in my home office looking out the window, meditating on the sun glancing off olive tree leaves, considering what to focus on this afternoon in this space, this First Sunday after Trinity and this Octave of Corpus Christi. I’ve got multiple projects on my desk – pieces promised  (two posts, two reviews), the final draft of Father Raynes’s Darkness No Darkness (an ACU reprint), a booklet reprint for one of our parishes, copies of The Magdalene Mystery to be sent to the Filipino priests I met in Rome, and lastly, my novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail, which I have returned to, determined to give it a couple of hours each day, but alas, not succeeding. Oh, and did I mention the brochure the Bishop asked me to help write and the Facebook site we will be setting up for our seminary chapel, St. Joseph of Arimathea?

I could write in this space about any of these things that clutter my little brain, but which one or two or three? Suddenly, across the lawn loped a coyote, at least I think he was a coyote. He was slim, the size of a midsize dog. Long narrow snout. Darkish gray, like a deer. Clearly wild and headed across our front lawn and down the hill toward the base of Mount Diablo. Clearly focused.

I suddenly realized how important choices were. I thought of all the ideas roaming in my head and how this coyote banished them in an instant. He focused my attention on his swift run through the plowed golden grass of the hill. He focused my attention on focusing. I wanted to run swiftly, on target, like he ran.

We are bombarded with choices every day, ways to spend our time, ways to waste our time, ways to kill our time. With each choice, we move in a certain direction and are then bombarded with more choices. How does one choose?

St. Joseph's 002compWe attended St. Joseph’s today, our seminary chapel in Berkeley a block from campus. It was easy in that domed and tiled space to become focused, to not waste any of the hour given. The organ thundered as we sang, Alleluia, Sing to Jesus. The acolytes and clergy processed in with flaming candles and crucifix held high. The stone altar was alight with six white wax pillars framing the tabernacle. Soon we were praying together the familiar words of the Anglican Mass, poetic language going back to the sixteenth century. We listened to Holy Scripture and the preacher preached on the Feast of Corpus Christi celebrated this last week, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Real Presence of Christ in the bread and the wine of our Eucharistic celebration.

We were focused in that hour. We had made choices this day, decisions not to go to the park, not to go shopping, not to have a late brunch or lunch, not to sit here and work on projects at my desk. We didn’t have to choose to get up early since the service was at 11:30, for which we were grateful. But we did have to choose to take a couple of hours out of our Sunday to worship God with his Body of Christ in Berkeley.

And that choice made all the difference. It will make all the difference in my life this week, and it made all the difference in my life last week. Our preacher said that there was a time in his life when he he didn’t choose church, he didn’t choose to have God in his life. He chose other things to do with his time given. But soon he felt a deep emptiness in his soul. Soon he was hungry for God and it was a hunger that he couldn’t fill with other choices. So he returned to church, and I am glad for that, for he is a powerful preacher, bringing the intimacy of God’s love to each one of us.

Choosing is like carving, with careful attention given to each shaving of the soul. We whittle away at our lives to create a sculpted image, the person that God intended and intends us to be. We need to be careful to carve in the right places, to choose no sometimes and to choose yes other times. So we need an educated soul, as well as a fully fed soul. We need God’s Word through Scripture and sermon, and we need God himself, through the mysterious miracle of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist.

The coyote was heading for food and water, I am sure. Our choices are more subtle and yet just that simple too. For choosing God, choosing to worship and be fed and watered by him each week, lightens our darkness, and makes all the other choosings easy.

I became, have become, focused, for life has come into focus, at least until my next encounter with God.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Shattering Time

Posted on September 8, 2013 | 1 comment

An elderly member of our parish journeyed to Heaven this last week. Her photograph was in our church’s narthex this morning – bright eyes, red hair, full of life.  It had been many years since I had seen her like that, for she had been weakening for a good and Godly while, and I smiled in recognition. She was younger then. (So was I.) 

I carried her image in my mind as I entered the nave and took a seat alongside my husband in the long oak pew. Now, thinking over the morning and my friend’s celestial journey, I am grateful for this great ark of the church that cradles each of us in this world. We the faithful sit in the nave, a word derived from the Latin navis or ship, and our own church is shaped rather like a boat, this one sailing the seas of Oakland, California. One day I too, like my friend, will journey out of this world and into the next, but for the time being I am protected by the Church. And not only protected, but in this womb I am fed by the Church, until reborn in Heaven. And what is the heavenly food that I feed upon in this womb of an ark?  I feed upon prayer, worship, scripture, and God himself in the Mass.

Today was fittingly a day of rebirth in our parish, celebrating the opening of the new Sunday School year with our annual Ice Cream Social. The children trooped up the red-carpeted aisle for their blessings and trooped out to their class. Soon they skipped downstairs for ice cream and home-made hot fudge. There were many smiles as we indulged, and more smiles as we were quizzed on Bible story facts and figures. There were prizes too.

Our children represent a new generation being raised up that replaces those, like my friend, that have journeyed on. So we teach (and show) our children the love of God. We tell them the stories of his great acts among us, those great acts that led up to the Incarnation in Nazareth two thousand years ago and those great acts since the Incarnation. Our preacher said today (and now I paraphrase, reaching into my rough memory) that the Cross intersected time and space; the Cross made past and future all new, re-newed. It shattered time. And I saw in my mind as he spoke the fissures of an earthquake crackling and cracking through time and space, in every direction. The Cross and the Resurrection changed everything. The Cross vanquished time by vanquishing death, giving us eternity.

We teach our children these stories of before the Cross (B.C., Before Christ) and after the Cross (A.D., After Christ, the Year of Our Lord). We call these eras Old Testament and New Testament (literally the old and the new testimony or witness or history) and we cradle our children in the ark of these stories, each account true in different degrees and ways, so that the new generation may know and be protected by the love of God. We teach our children God’s commandments so that they may experience God’s loving forgiveness. We teach them to sing and celebrate and offer themselves to God in the great liturgy of the Mass, so that they may receive God back in the bread and wine, and so be inspired, full of the Spirit, as they travel through the hours and days of the week ahead.

We cradle our children in the Church, just as my friend had been nourished and cradled by the Church in her earthly life. Through the Church God holds us close to him, and we sail on the waves of our sea of earthly time, the way clearly charted and the destination in sight. The bow of our ark cleaves cleanly through the waters, whether stormy or still, our ship directed and driven by the words of consecration before the altar within, where in the glorious song and silence of each Sunday morning (and sometimes during the week), God’s priest re-members (pulls into the present) the action of the Cross and  shatters time in the mystery of the Mass.

Dear Dwan, may your soul rest in peace and may light perpetual shine upon you.

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday in Hana, Maui

Posted on July 14, 2013 | Leave a comment

Learning the Lord’s Prayer in Hawaiian may now be on my to-do list. I have picked up French and Italian “Our Father” phrases through the years, but Hawaiian is particularly foreign to my western ear. Even so, the prayer song this morning in Hana’s St. Mary’s Church was lilting and lovely and I think God smiled upon our efforts. 

On our way to St. Mary’s, we passed the Wananalua Church, the historic Congregational Church which is featured in my novel, Hana-lani (Nani-lei’s church with the big white cross), and continued the half block to the historic Catholic Church. St. Mary’s is a white church, inside and out. It’s whiteness is like entering a soft cloud, airy and arched, and its curved windows along the side aisles open onto a sea of green grass. At the door we were greeted warmly with leis of vines and leaves and wide smiles and kisses on the cheek. We found seats in a pew. Others came in, some greeting friends and family, some looking about for the first time, wondering at the airy interior, visitors like us.

The Mass danced through the white space. Hawaiian phrases sailed alongside English as though the temperate breezes blowing through the windows winged and paired them as they flew to the high altar. I felt as though I too had been borne up high on the “wings of a prayer” to a holy aerie. Yet, I knew that we the people anchored the pews as all around and above angels dived and soared in their airy dance.

It was a good thing to worship together here in Hana once more, and again I sensed the Body of Christ united before God’s altar, partaking of God himself, allowing God to weave through each of us as we stood in song or knelt in prayer. The hymns weren’t our classic Anglo-Catholic hymns from our home parish, but the beat was easy and the words profound, and as I found myself tapping my toe lightly on the hardwood floor, I sensed that we the people were pulled into the experience of worship itself. This is a good thing and not to be considered lightly – to be pulled into prayer and praise, singing together with one voice to God our creator. And it is not a good thing, I think, to be pushed away from joining in worship, to be watching as spectators, as sometimes happens in evangelical or even high liturgical productions, silencing the voices of the people in the pews. 

The Mass, the great prayer given to us by Christ, is meant to be a sacred shared supper, one that never loses sight of God’s presence in the bread and wine, always points to whom we worship with every fiber of our being, every intention of our soul. When we cross the threshold of a church, we step into the home of God and the home of his people. We become one in him and through him one with each other. We are in this place, this sacred space, to worship God, and to receive him into our hearts and bodies. We are God’s family, his dear children.

Hana, Maui is a small gentle town sloping to the sea. The green flanks of Haleakala rise to the west and the blue waters undulate to the east. The sun appears early, erupting from the curved horizon separating sea and sky, traveling up and turning slate to silver to deep sapphire. The trade winds soften the burning sun and the sky is an ever-changing drama of cloud formations.

And near the center of town, where Hasegawa’s General Store offers snacks and tackle and the Post Office connects with the rest of the world, a white church stands in the grass, with its doors open and welcoming. “Come on in,” the church says. “We love you.”

So we did just that this Sunday morning in Hana town, and I’m so glad we did.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

A Potent Time

Posted on January 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

It is a potent time.

The edge of Epiphany, along the border of Christmas, hovers over the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade and the Presidential inauguration. A potent few days, as we reflect on the light of Christ coming to the world of the gentiles, the horror of forty years of legalized infanticide, and the celebration of a duly elected president sworn in to office, sworn to uphold the laws of the land. And then there’s football to divert us.

As for children lost to abortion, I pray the light of Epiphany might fill those dedicated saints who are marching to save future generations, holding banners in the freezing temperatures of our towns and cities across this great land. And I pray that the light of Epiphany may enlighten our president as he continues his term of governance, that it may enlighten all of our elected men and women who represent you and I in Congress.

We are a nation of elections, a democracy. And thus each of us must be informed voters, ready to make all the difference in the future of our culture and society. Each one of us must decide the future of our people; we cannot avoid this responsibility. Each one of us must turn away from the siren songs of the media and search out the truth. Each one of us, in a democracy, are accountable members of this body politic.

These are heavy matters, especially today in the cold dark of winter, and so we like to watch football. We are a fragile nation but a good one, one that continues to enlighten – and defend – other nations. America beckons everyone. All the world seeks to come here. Yet we have been chastened of late. We have been pruned. Will America fall? some ask. Will it survive without its Judeo-Christian roots? Will it flower once again?

My rose bushes have been pruned. I am told they must be cut back so that they will grow new blossoms. It is hard to believe this as I gaze at the butchered stalks in the pale light outside my window. But as I wait for spring, I think how blessed I am to be nourished by Sunday church. This morning my senses were warmed by the red-carpeted nave leading to the high altar and tented tabernacle. I was nourished by the experience of God, by holy worship, where robed priests and acolytes step softly and reverently as though each movement mattered, and my prayers and songs danced with them through the liturgy of the Eucharist.

Eucharist, I understand, means thanksgiving. And we have much to be thankful for. In the Eucharist, the Mass, we empty ourselves so that we may be filled up. We arrive wintry souls, barren stalks, and as we prune ourselves of the sins of pride and passion that have owned our hours this last week, as we empty ourselves, clean out our souls, we ready ourselves for God’s light to enter. And enter He does, gently, fully, lovingly. By the end of this precious hour of procession, song, prayer, word, and sacrament we are filled up with God, filled by God. We give thanks, we praise, we become small in the presence of glory, in the beauty of holiness. Then, filled with God, we can hear his voice. We can hear what we are to do, how we are to evaluate and judge, why we are to love and suffer in the coming week.

God’s spirit descends upon us just as His spirit descended upon Jesus when baptized by John. Our preacher explained this morning that Jesus is the very same Word breathed by God the Father over the waters, when our world was birthed. In the Eucharist, we take in that Word and are recreated, re-generated.

Regenerated. I have found that if I am given God’s direction, His light in this way – kneeling in a warm church on a cold Sunday – that the past week and the future week make sense. I enter the doors empty and leave full. I know as I descend the stairs to our parish hall for coffee and sandwiches that I have been made new. And I have been given hope that my will might possibly merge with God’s, the only true path to happiness.

Without this light, I slip into self, into darkness. I become full with other things and God cannot find room. My days fall into chaos, confusion, sadness.

But with regular worship, I can see and understand. The world makes sense: the sacrament of time – Epiphany merging into Lent; the fitting and happy celebration of a democratic election accomplished in (for the most part) a law-abiding land, a quilt of many cultures and skins and points of view. Even the horror of this forty-year memorial, mourning the innocents slaughtered, I know, one day, will be redeemed.

For the light of God, indeed God himself, wins in the end. He shines in the dark even if the darkness comprehends it not. And He shines for us, should we desire Him, especially in church.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , ,