The Kingdom of God is within you

"The kingdom of God is within you'"corresponds to the sense of taste. This spiritual sense perceives that God is not just close to us, but that weare rooted in him. The food we eat is taken inside of us and becomes us through its transformation into cells in our body. In a sense, we become what we eat. In the transcendent relationship, we become cells in the Body of Christ, the new humanity whose eyes and ears are opening to reality at its deepest level.

Keating, Thomas, Awakenings (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 39.

Sharing a beautiful video

A friend sent me this video, and it is too beautiful not to share with others.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy.

http://www.findingjoymovie.com/

Eastertide Hospitality

Yes, it’s been over two weeks since my last posting, but now that I’m back I’ll be posting much more regularly. In the past half-week, my wife and I have traveled from Kentucky to Missouri, specifically to reunite myself with an dear friend whom I’ve not seen for over thirty-five years. What a heart-hugging experience. Somewhat isolated in the Ozark Mountains, farmer Chas Roth and his wife Liza welcomed us with open arms and squeezed us warmly with gracious and wonderful hospitality. And wouldn’t you know it? Last night during Evening Prayer St. Peter said that we are to “practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another” (I Peter 4). Chas and Liza have taken those words seriously all their lives! Sharing more of our weekend with you later today, I’ll be posting pictures at http://www.yourfamilyblog.blogspot.com/. Right now my point here in Praying Daily is to remind all of us that within every Benedictine Monastery there is always a reminding sign that says, “Welcome Each One as Christ Himself.” That's how Chas welcomed me over the weekend. It was wonderful.

Chas' hugs reminded me of God's great welcome and "Come on in!" As we offer our lives in prayer to God and contemplatively enter the Mystery of His Presence, we do so aware that God is always the Gracious Host, always welcoming us, holding the door open so that He can enjoy our entrance into His “farm.” As the Great Gardener, God likes to show us around, urging us to shake hands with all and everyone in His creation. So walk like a beloved guest today in God’s world. Say “Hi” to the sky, the animals, the fields, gardens, and everyone whom you meet. Say “Hello” and “Good morning” to place where you work, live, and worship. Say, “God bless you” to the ground you walk on and to the cashier who rings up your bill at the grocery store. Say “Thank you!” to every Chas and Liza who welcomes you into their lives and arms. Hug God so close that you can hear His heart beating.

The Easter Vigil

On Holy Saturday evening, June and I participated in the Easter Vigil at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Covington, GA. When it came to light the "new fire" outside the church, Fr. Tim asked me--I was a good Boy Scout sixty years ago--to light the fire so that the Paschal Candle might be lit from its flames. Although it was windy, it took only one match to get the bundle of paper and twigs ablaze. Nevertheless, the Pascal Candle declined its lighting in the stiff breezes, and so we had to go to Plan B, as Fr. Tim explained things: we lit the Pascal Candle with a cigarette lighter, and then made our way into the nave singing "Light of Christ," with incense a'plenty. The Rev. Buddy Crawford, the parish deacon ("deacon" here indicating his being in first of the orders toward becoming a priest) chanted the Excultet, the Easter Proclamation, with a absolutely lovely voice. Here's the text sung by the deacon standing next to the Paschal Candle:

Rejoice, heavenly powers!
Sing, choirs of angels!
Exult, all creation around God's throne!
Jesus Christ, our King, is risen!
Sound the trumpet of salvation!
Rejoice, O earth, in shining splendor,radiant in the brightness of your King!
Christ has conquered! Glory fills you!
Darkness vanishes for ever!
Rejoice, O Mother Church!
Exult in glory!
The risen Savior shines upon you!

Let this place resound with joy,
echoing the mighty song of all God's people!

My dearest friends,standing with me in this holy light,
join me in asking God for mercy, that . . . . (the rest of the Exaltet)

The Eucharist itself was beautifully celebrated, and an infant was baptized during all the happiness. So began our new Eastertide living in the resurrection of Christ. May your Eastertide be as joyous as ours.

Praying with Merton

For my Eastertide gift for anyone who comes along and reads these postings, I'm promising you a new sister blog, Praying with Merton. Here's how it will work: several times a week I will begin by sharing with you my reading of Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation, one of Fr. Louis' most enjoyable books. I'll go chapter by chapter, page by page, quoting Merton and making a few observations on my own. If all goes well, I make my first post on Easter Monday. I hope you enjoy what you see, read, and share.

x

Waiting for Easter (like a Good Ol' Georgia Pine)

Today is a day of waiting, and often waiting for anything, perhaps much more so for Easter, can be a wearisome business. Most likely you, like me, will spend this day of waiting by getting ready, not only for your parish's Holy Saturday Easter Vigil or Easter morning worship, but also for preparing Sunday's dinner, for visiting friends, or for sharing your lives with the world's poor.

When waiting is a big part of my life, I often like to read quietly (out under trees if possible), and in this morning's earliest light, while reading Thomas Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation, this came to me:

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It ‘consents’ so to speak, to God’s creative love. It is expressing an idea which is in God and which is not distinct from the essence of God, and therefore a tree imitates God by being a tree…. This particular tree will give glory to God by spreading out its roots in the earth and raising its branches into the air and the light in a way that no other tree before or after it ever did or will do. Therefore each particular being, in its individuality, its concrete nature and entity, with all its own characteristics and its private qualities and its own inviolable identity, gives glory to God by being precisely what God wants it to be here and now, in the circumstances ordained for it by God’s Love and God’s infinite Art.

As I wait (and later vacuum the house and help June get ready for the family to visit tomorrow), I'll give glory to God this Holy Saturday by simply being Andy. That should be easy enough, just like the trees over my head are now simply being trees.

Image: Ol' Georgia Pines Rising Above Me as I Read by Andy

What the Early Church Taught about Holy Week and Easter

It is long-held Tradition, based on the Biblical texts, that Jesus died on a Friday and rose from the dead on a Sunday, which would place the Last Supper on a Thursday night. Scripture tells us that Jesus rose from the dead "early on the first day of the week" (Mark 16:2, RSV). It was on the same day (the first day of the week) that Jesus met his apostles on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:1). John also confirms that Jesus rose on a Sunday (John 20:1). The early Church Fathers universally held that Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday, and worshiped on Sunday, "The Lord's Day." The Fathers also testify to the Institution of the Eucharist on a Thursday and a Friday crucifixion of Jesus. Even though Jesus tells us that he was to be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights, in ancient Jewish reckoning, this included partial days. Thus, Jesus was saying that his time in the earth would span three days (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). Saint Justin Martyr (writing in 150 AD) testifies to both Sunday worship and a Friday crucifixion of Jesus:

But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples
. . . . (First Apology 67)

The Didache (70-90 AD) also mentions Sunday worship, and fasting on Fridays (likely connected to Jesus' crucifixion that day):

Let not your fasts be with the hypocrites... but fast on the fourth day and the Preparation (Friday)...But every Lord's day gather yourselves together, and break bread, and give thanksgiving after having confessed your transgressions, that your sacrifice may be pure (8, 14).

The Apostolic Constitutions (late 4th century) verifies the same chronology. Note that, based on Scripture, this document provides the rationale for the dates of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday.

And on the fifth day of the week (Thursday), when we had eaten the Passover with Him, and when Judas had dipped his hand into the dish, and received the sop, and was gone out by night, the Lord said to us: "The hour is come that ye shall be
dispersed, and shall leave me alone" (V:3:XIV).

. . . it being the day of the preparation (Friday), they delivered Him to Pilate the Roman governor, accusing Him of many and great things, none of which they could prove . . . . [Jesus] commanded us to fast on the fourth and sixth (Friday) days of the week; the former on account of His being betrayed, and the latter on account of His passion (V:3:XIV, XV).

But when the first day of the week (Sunday) dawned He arose from the dead, and fulfilled those things which before His passion He foretold to us, saying: "The Son of man must continue in the heart of the earth three days and three nights" (V:3:XIV).

Virtually every Church Father who addresses the issue agrees with the traditional dating of a Thursday Last Supper, Friday Crucifixion, and Sunday resurrection. This includes those Church Fathers and writings mentioned above, but also Ignatius (105 AD), Pseudo-Barnabas (120 AD), Clement of Alexandria (195 AD), and many others. This chronology is firmly based on Scripture, and universally verified by Tradition.

Text Source: All About Holy Saturday; Image: The Road to Resurrection

Good Friday

I often don’t know what to do with Good Friday. Somehow this day with Jesus is most profound when I do nothing, allowing Jesus to do everything.

After the stripping of the altar last night, everyone left the church in silence. June and I drove home with little to say. We jotted down the addresses of a few homes for sale in a small corner of McDonough, Georgia, while driving around. Then we headed back to Jackson Lake.

I woke up this morning early. After Prayers I went outside to put a few things away in case of rain. In an hour or so we’ll drive back to McDonough to help the parish at First Baptist Church provide and serve dinners for an anticipated three hundred less fortunate people who surely need and appreciate a decent meal. No doubt there will be preaching and singing of songs. While I will listen, I suspect that mostly I'll simply try to help out as best I can whether serving dinners, doing what's asked, or simply enjoying the faces of people whom I'd like to know.

While I realize that some of us will worship in various churches (the folks at St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in McDonough will do the ten evangelical “Stations of the Cross”), my own Good Friday afternoon will most likely be a walk somewhere as I look for some quiet time, some opening for solitude and silence. During that time (if it comes), I’m not sure what I’ll do, say, think, or whatever. I might well be at a loss for words and thoughts, more of less feeling empty, dried out. It during such times when I may not know how to pray that I remember what Francois de Salignac Fenelon (1651-1715) once said:

MANY are tempted to believe that they no longer pray, when they cease to
enjoy a certain pleasure in the act of prayer. But, if they will reflect that perfect prayer is only another name for love to God, they will be undeceived.

Prayer, then, does not consist in sweet feelings, nor in the charms of an excited imagination, nor in that illumination of the intellect that traces with ease the sublimest truths in God; nor even in a certain consolation in the view of God: all these things are external gifts . . . .

Remember our Lord abandoned by his Father on the cross: all feeling, all reflection withdrawn that his God might be hidden from him; this was indeed the last blow that fell upon the man of sorrows, the consummation of the sacrifice.

Never should we so abandon ourselves to God as when He seems to abandon us. Let us enjoy light and consolation when it is his pleasure to give it to us, but let us not attach ourselves to his gifts, but to Him; and when He plunges us into the night of Pure Faith, let us still press on through the agonizing darkness.

Moments are worth days in this tribulation; the soul is troubled and yet at peace; not only is God hidden from it, but it is hidden from itself, that all may be of faith; it is discouraged, but feels nevertheless an immovable will to bear all that God may choose to inflict; it wills all, accepts all, even the troubles that try its faith, and thus in the very height of the tempest, the waters beneath are secretly calm and at peace, because its Will is one with God's. Blessed be the Lord who performs such great things in us, notwithstanding our unworthiness.

Christian Perfection, VII, On Prayer

Today is Maundy Thursday, and anticipating Jesus coming to us in the Eucharist tonight. June and I will be at St. Luke Lutheran Church, a little store-front place in McDonough. Georgia. Several days ago we met the parish's pastor, Robb Harrell, a once-long-ago Baptist who became Lutheran because the Holy Gospel is articulated and celebrated so beautifully in the Divine Liturgy. (among other reasons). Pastor Robb has a fine sense of the evangelical-catholic tradition so often apparent in the Lutheran Church, and we’re looking forward both to hearing his homily tonight and participating in the Eucharist under his pastoral presiding.

Earlier today during Morning Prayer, June and I decided to read the fourth reading from the our lectionary because we probably will not be able to say Evening Prayer (getting to St. Luke's Eucharist requires driving considerable distance.) What a delightful surprise it was to find out that the fourth reading in our prayerbook for Thursday in Holy Week is from John Calvin’s Short Treatise on the Holy Supper of our Lord: we read it slowly and carefully; you will want to do the same:

But as the blessings of Jesus Christ do not belong to us at all, unless he be previously ours, it is necessary, first of all, that he be given us in the upper, in order that the things which we have mentioned may be truly accomplished in us. For this reason I am wont to say, that the substance of the sacraments is the Lord Jesus, and the efficacy of them the graces and blessings which we have by his means. Now the efficacy of the Supper is to confirm to us the reconciliation which we have with God through our Savior’s death and passion; the washing of our souls which we have in the shedding of his blood; the righteousness which we have in his obedience; in short, the hope of salvation which we have in all that he has done for us. It is necessary, then, that the substance should be conjoined with these; otherwise, nothing would be firm or certain. Hence we conclude that two things are presented to us in the Supper, viz., Jesus Christ as the source and substance of all good; and, secondly, the fruit and efficacy of his death and passion. This is implied in the words which were used. For after commanding us to eat his body and drink his blood, he adds that his body was delivered for us, and his blood shed for the remission of our sins. Hereby he intimates, first, that we ought not simply to communicate in his body and blood, without any other consideration, but in order to receive the fruit derived to us from his death and passion; secondly that we can attain the enjoyment of such fruit only by participating in his body and blood, from which it is derived.

Johm Calvin's witness to the reality of Holy Communion is remarkably full--high, deep, and wide! His understanding of the Eucharist is profoundly catholic. Calvin says unequivocally that in order to receive Christ’s benefits we must receive Christ himself as their only source. This, of course, is the orthodox, evangelical, and catholic understanding of Holy Communion. Christ gives us himself in the Eucharistic bread and wine; all subsequent blessings come from him.

All this is important because as a Lutheran (who affirms with the church catholic that we receive the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar), I was erroneously told years ago that Calvinists were under the impression that the Lord’s Supper was "only" a symbol of Christ’s presence in the world. Calvin, the spiritual father of our Presbyterian friends, certainly thought otherwise. For him Christ is the authentic “substance” of the sacrament and only by receiving him in the Eucharist do we receive the gifts and fruits he offers, namely the forgiveness of sins and newness of life.

As you attend Holy Communion tonight, may the holy catholic church in all of its various manifestions (Lutheran, Episcopalian, Roman, Presbyterian, Orthodox, Methodist, among others) give you opportunity to receive Our Lord Jesus in the sacrament of the altar so that you are filled with his divine presence as our Incarnate Lord. Living with the presence of Christ deep within your mind, soul, and body leads to forgiveness, regeneration, adoption, and resurrection. On Maundy Thursday, let the fullness of Christ abiding in you show you how to live to the glory of the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

Holy Week, 2009

On Palm Sunday (also known as Sunday of the Passion), June and I visited St. John Lutheran Church in Griffin, GA, and we were welcomed by Pastor Katie Pasch and her parishioners. Joining some thirty or forty other worshippers, we began the service by walking slowly into the sanctuary, palm fronds in our hands, while singing a Palm Sunday hymn. During the service parishioners, previously assigned "voices" in the passion narrative of St. Mark, read most of chapter 14. Pastor Katie preached a fine homily on the second reading from Scripture, God's word in Chapter 2 of Phillipians. The Eucharist itself, simple and chaste (if that's the right word) was marked with clear articulations of "the Body of Christ for you" and "the Blood of Christ for you." After the final blessing, we shared breakfast with a number of parishioners, all of whom were welcomingly full of Christ's hospitality. It was a wonderful way to enter Holy Week. Now we look forward to the rest of Holy Week: Morning and Evening Prayer with special hymns, readings, and collects; the Paschal Triduum--Maundy Thursday and the Stripping of the Altar, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. And then we enter the Easter Vigil and arrive at the Feast of the Resurrection.

As together we pass through this week, each in her or his own way by parish and church tradition, June and I pray for deep repentance over our waywardness, a solid determination to amend our lives, and the overarching compassion and mercy of God so that his presence in both repentance and determination brings us to Easter with gladness.

As always, remember God's beloved poor and strive mightily to serve justice.