Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Rejoice, O Mother Church...

Eastertide
... Exalt in glory! The risen Savior shines upon you! ...

This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death and rose triumphant from the grave. What good would life have been to us, had Christ not come as our Redeemer? Father, how wonderful your care for us! How boundless your merciful love! To random a slave you gave away your Son.

How blessed is this night, when heaven and earth are joined, and man is reconciled with God!

- from the "Exsultet," an ancient hymn for the Feast of the Resurrection.
As I've said, Vine and Branches celebrated a joint liturgy with Saint Patrick's Anglican Church; Peter celebrated Mass, while Alan preached the homily and chanted the Exsultet. He was amazing, I must say.

As Alan notes in his post, he didn't preach about the resurrection - why try to upstage the Scriptures? - but rather reminded us how this liturgy, and the liturgy of the Church overall, is repetitive and cyclical because that's how we're formed. As Anglicans say, as you pray, so will you believe. When we follow the steps of Jesus year by year, and take our places among the crowds and the disciples and the demoniacs, we learn to understand our own stories in the context of his larger story of saving the world.

Check out Bryan's photos here; here's one below.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

The homily at the Latin Mass was about those who deny the physical resurrection of Christ. Where are you on that one?

Anonymous said...

Hmmm... I was going to say something about how annoying and rude it is to leave comments anonymously but that is probably not my place.

Happy Easter, Kyle!

:)

Kyle said...

Noakes, I assume it was Puglisi, and he just forgot his Blogger login info, which was just a pseudonym anyway.

And Puglisi, I have two things to say:

1. Given that I believe in the Real Presence, I'll let you infer what I might believe about the actual Resurrection. :0)

2. If Latin Mass priest could think of no better topic for an Easter homily than heretics (you know, as opposed to preaching on the Resurrection or something), he might have some flaws as catechist.

Happy Easter, guys.

Anonymous said...

It seems as though Alan has grown a horn since I last saw him : ) It must be the devil in him coming out.

+ Alan said...

Yeah, Will, it's just the one horn. It'll fall off any time now I'm sure.

And what about non-Christians, I mean, people who don't believe in the real physical resurrection of Jesus? Oh, I guess I just said what didn't I.

Hey, you know, we all face Godward during the Eucharistic consecration at vbcc too you know. :)

Kyle said...

Yah, that about says it, then.

I'm sure they might be lovely folks otherwise, but Christians? Nope.

#Debi said...

That's not a devil horn, that's the shekina glory settling upon him...

I believe that Paul said it best about non-believers in the physical resurrection (and I paraphrase):

If you don't believe that Jesus rose from the dead, then what's the point?