This is the night!
We rise our Lord to meet, trampling death beneath our feet.
The Great Vigil of Easter.
Shadows, light, fire, water.
Dance in the graveyard!
This is The Night!
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Hodie
Today the Celtic arm of the church remembers the Eve of St. Expedite: Carrier of Messages.
St. Expedite, despite the humorous name, is an actual saint that the Roman church canonized, yet took from the rolls due to lack of ”lived evidence.” Like Sts. Christopher and Valentine, this saint doesn’t have much historical backing to legitimize their existence.
And yet, they remain an important part of lore. Why?
Glad you asked…
Expedient soldiers were Roman officers who carried no packs and could move with ease. They were often employed to deliver special messages or deliver pertinent materials to other divisions in quick step.
St. Expedite was thought to be an Armenian Christian who, rather than give worship to the Emperor, died a martyr as a faithful member of the faith, running their errands as necessary.
Calling the phrase “Hodie,” this fast runner yelled “today!” before him, delivering messages far and wide.
Yes, this saint is largely lore. But why are they important?
Because “today” is really the only day we’re promised, Beloved.
And this saint, like so many of the Celtic tradition, draws our attention to what is needful in the world.
So, as St. Mary Oliver rightly asked, what will you do with your, “One wild and precious life?”
-historical notes taken from common sources
A Good Friday Thought
Good Friday thought:
From the cross, the Christ yells, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
In this he was quoting the Psalms, his childhood prayer book.
At the end he was doing what he was taught to do as a boy: say his prayers.
The Triduum
As we enter Holy Week, a thought on the events to come:
The Triduum, or Great Three Days, is the antidote to an overly saccharine Easter.
Maundy Thursday gathers the disciples, including you, around a shared table where we all get our feet washed and we all share in dipping our bread in the same bowl as Jesus.
Then the sanctuary is stripped, like our souls now feel stripped, as we realize not only what is about to happen, but also that we must stay to bear witness.
On Good Friday we come not to church, but, with everything bare and the lights low, to a darkened tomb. There we encounter the story of that fateful night, a story we know well not only because we’ve heard it every year, but also because we’ve lived it. It’s familiar.
We’ve all been betrayed by our friends, and have all betrayed a friend. We’ve all been falsely accused and accused others without evidence, let alone our unspoken shame knowing our justice system does this, and profits from it all the time.
We’ve all seen power prey on the powerless. This is that story, but instead of the local courtroom it’s the courtroom of the cosmos.
The reproaches are sung where we’re challenged to answer unanswerable questions of eternal proportions, and the service ends with the cross alone left in the room.
We are, in the end, left only with the cross: this twisted tool of torture to which we now cling, hoping that something good can yet come from it.
Sound familiar?
And then we spend the whole next day in the quiet of non-answers. And at dusk we stream back to that tomb, create a new fire to keep our souls warm, and tell campfire stories of salvation to console ourselves.
“Remember that time that God created the world?” we ask around the fire. “And remember when God saved those folks from the fiery furnace?” We retell these stories as a way to spark hope that, as in those impossible moments, God might be able to do something new with this impossible moment. We teach these stories to our babies, even as we reteach it to ourselves.
And then before we know it, the tomb has turned into a lush garden, and that tomb that was full of death is suddenly full of life: flowers, water, and yes, living bodies.
Our bodies.
Our bodies who now gather around the body of the risen Christ now seen in bread, wine, water, and the faces around us. And we baptize people who have newly heard all of this. And we sing and dance and party because, yup, resurrection has happened again, by God!
The whole arc has import. Every scene plays a part.
Easter is not a day, it’s a journey
Monday in Holy Week
For the Christian Celts, the Monday (and sometimes Tuesday and Wednesday) of Holy Week was dedicated to cleaning the house and the home (with Holy Thursday dedicated for cleaning the chapel).
After months of inside smoke from the hearth dusting everything with soot, and with the spots above and around the well-used candles getting dingy and oily, Spring cleaning served both practical and spiritual purposes. Spring was a time of renewal, and so it made sense to renew the home from the dinge of winter.
But, as importantly, Spring cleaning mirrored the inward housecleaning of the Lenten days. With Easter almost upon them. the last few corners of the soul were tended, swept, and exposed to the light for purification.
True Discipleship
Today the church remembers a 17th Century saint, the first Native American that the church officially canonized: St. Kateri Tekakwitha, the Lily of the Mohawks.
St. Kateri was born to an Algonquin mother who was a practicing Christian and a Mowhak Turtle chief, who was not a Christian. When she was just four years old, a smallpox epidemic took both of her parents and her brother, leaving her with damaged eyesight and noticeable scars on her face. She was taken in by her uncle, who did not approve of her mother’s faith.
At the age of 18, St. Kateri secretly started studying with Jesuit missionaries, and she decided to be baptized and assume the name “Kateri” in honor of St. Catherine of Siena.
A year after her baptism, French conquerors came through and massacred her people and burned their village. St. Kateri escaped by taking to the St. Lawrence River. She was taken in by a First Nations tribe down river who happened to be Christian, and she dedicated her life to prayer and the care for the sick.
At the age of twenty-three St. Kateri contracted tuberculosis, and died shortly before turning twenty-four. Her final words were reportedly, “Jesus–Mary–I love you.”
She was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1980, the first First Nations saint to be canonized (though, truly, many are canonized in the hearts of those who know their stories). She is often referred to as Lily of the Mohawks.
St. Kateri is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that sometimes those who have walked the most unjust roads are the perfect companions for those in need. St. Kateri’s life was ravaged by white invaders who brought their diseases, guns, and unbridled ambition to take over a land and subjugate a people they had no claim to, often in the name of religion and the church.
But, like her Jesus whom she loved so much, St. Kateri was a model for them of true discipleship.
-historical bits gleaned from Claiborne and Wilson-Hartgrove’s Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals
-icon written by Barbara Brocato
On Palms
Today the church commemorates the Palm Sunday processional in many parishes across the globe. This moveable commemoration is the beginning of the end of the new beginning for Christians who observe the liturgical calendar.
Bishop Theodulph of Orleans penned the hymn my heart is singing on this Palm Sunday morning, “All Glory, Laud, and Honor.”
It truly is one of my favorites, made more sacred by the fact that we really only sing it once a year.
He is said to have written it from his prison tower, thrown there by King Louis the Debonair, son of Charlemagne.
The story goes that the Bishop wrote this hymn and, in the year 821 as the Emperor passed by on Palm Sunday heading to Mass at the cathedral, he sang it loudly over the passing procession from his stone entombment. The emperor, taken with the song, released the good Bishop.
Truly the rocks themselves will shout for justice.
-painting by Polly Castor
Short Time, Big Difference
Attention my Finnish friends! Attention!
Today the church remembers a Finnish Bishop who studied under Martin Luther himself: St. Mikael Agricola, Bishop of Turku, Renewer of the Church, and Mystic.
Born in Uusimaa (the Fins think “why use one vowel when you can use two?), he went to school in Viipuri and then Turku. He was a good student and due to his scholarly achievements, he was sent by his Bishop to Wittenberg to study under Luther and Malanchthon.
After his graduation, Luther wrote him a letter of recommendation (apparently those have been necessary in the schola forever) and he became Assistant to the Bishop at Turku, eventually succeeding him in the bishopric without seeking Papal approval (a big no-no).
As Bishop St. Mikael undertook extensive Lutheran reforms throughout Finland, encouraging greater participation and catechesis of the laity. Toward this end, he developed an orthography, the basis for modern Finnish spelling, and prepared a book of ABC’s, a prayer book, a New Testament translation, a translation of the Mass, and a collection of Finnish hymns.
Truly, he was an educator as well as a theologian.
After being sent to Russia as part of a delegation to negotiate a peace between Russia and Sweden, he fell ill on the return trip. He died the night of Palm Sunday in 1557 after having been Bishop for only three years.
Though much of his work was in the practical changes needed for an informed church, he was a deeply spiritual person who held ancient mysticism in high regard.
He is widely commemorated in Finland to this day.
St. Mikael is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church, that you don’t have to be in a position for very long to make a huge difference.
-historical bits gleaned from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
On Trees
For the ancient Celts, April was the month of new life long before the Christians invaded their lands. They saw the blossoming of the ground and understood deep in their bones that resurrection was not only possible, but probable in this life (and others).
One of the things they took the time to do in these days was connect with trees. They imagined that the trees had their own kingdom, and their own way of communicating (which they do…Google the latest science on the matter!). Tolkien understood this, which is why the Ents played a lovely part in his fantasy world.
Here is the suggestion for deepening your relationship with trees (honestly, they would do this):
-Wander through different groves. Quiet your mind. Touch the trunk of a tree or two and pay attention to it.
-Take a leaf from a tree and rub it between your fingers.
-Sit against a trunk and imagine in gratitude that it gives you shade and fruit (whatever kind it gives) and life.
-Fall into a state of peace and just be with it for a while.
As trees awaken in these April days, the Celts believed humanity, the ground, and the animals would follow that energy and awaken, too.
I think they’re on to something.
Gadfly of the Nazis
It’s worth noting that today the church remembers a contemporary saint who took wrestling with demons, both in his heart and in his country, seriously: St. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Teacher, Martyr, Gadfly of the Nazis.
Born at the turn of the 20th Century in Breslau, St. Dietrich grew up in the intellectual circles of Germany. He studied hard, was trained as a scholar and theologian, and as a young pastor he moved to both Barcelona (where he was assistant pastor at a German-speaking congregation) and then to New York City where he was a visiting lecturer at Union Seminary.
It was during his time in New York that he felt his guts calling him to return home to Europe, the belly of a waking beast, and fight for the soul of his people from the inside. As the Nazi party ascended in 1933, the growing anti-Semitism was alarming to him as a person of faith. From 1933-1935 he served as the pastor of two small German congregations in London, but became the voice of the Confessing Church, the Protestant resistance to the Nazi party’s coopting of the national church. He made his way back to his homeland with both conviction and trepidation.
In 1935 St. Bonhoeffer organized a new underground seminary to train theologians in the art of subversive resistance (because the Divine is subversive!), and he began publishing the thoughts flowing from his heart in this difficult, hidden work. Life Together and The Cost of Discipleship describe the role a Christian is called to play in times of turmoil, and he encouraged his fellow believers to reject the “cheap grace” that smacked of moral laxity.
In 1939 St. Dietrich was introduced to a cadre of political exiles who sought to overthrow Hitler. Working with other church leaders throughout the world, including the Bishop of Chichester, St. Bonhoeffer tried to broker peace deals, but to no avail. Hitler could not be trusted to keep his word, and so the Allies would only accept unconditional surrender.
Bonhoeffer was arrested on April 5th, 1943, shortly after proposing to the love of his life. An attempt on Hitler’s life had failed the previous year, and documents were discovered linking St. Dietrich to the plot.
After a short stay in the Berlin jail, Bonhoeffer was taken to Buchenwald concentration camp, and then on to Schonberg prison. There he wrote letters to his best friend and his fiance, and conducted pastoral duties for the prisoners there.
On Sunday, April 8th, 1945, just after he concluded church services, two men with weapons emerged from the forest, not unlike the soldiers in the Garden of Gethsemane. They said, “Prisoner Bonhoeffer, come with us!”
Bonhoeffer, putting up no fight, said to his fellow prisoner, “This is the end. For me, the beginning of life.”
He was hanged in Flossenburg prison on April 9, 1945.
St. Bonhoeffer wrestled deeply with evil in the world. He was a pacifist theologian, and yet he involved himself in the plot to destroy Hitler because he felt that to not do so would be a greater evil than the man’s death.
St. Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a reminder for me, and should be for the whole church (everyone?!), that wrestling with evil must be something everyone does with honesty and conviction, and that sometimes it comes at a price that can be quite high.
Grace is free, but not cheap.
-historical bits from Pfatteicher’s New Book of Festivals & Commemorations
-note that sometimes I use the phrase “saint” in the Protestant definition of the word: someone who has died in the faith. Bonhoeffer is not canonized by any official means, just within the hearts of those of us who trust subversion to be the ways of the Divine
-icon written by Kelly Latimore. You can buy his amazing work at https://kellylatimoreicons.com/
Reluctant Xtian 