Light the New Fire on Easter Eve

[3] …the ecclesiological sea change signified by their contemporary retrieval in the western churches. They (the Triduum liturgies)* signify the emrgence of a church “after Christendom,” a church that understands itself as a discipline practice of values and beliefs that arguably diverge from the prevailing values of western modernity. They signify a renewed commitment to transformation – to a life that emerges from death, to a life that involves death to the old order as the doorway to life in a new reality.

[4] Treating liturgical practice as the site of theology involves the recognition that liturgy is not merely a reflection of what Christians already believe but rather a privileged site where belief arises. In the liturgical action, the assembly, as Gail Ramshaw observes, is “pried open by prayer”: liturgical practices enlarge the sense of self, drawing the members of the assembly into a story larger than their own. Bringing to the liturgy their pain and their joy, their longing for redemption and resistance to it, their desires half-formed and a sense – however dim – of a world in right order, Christians deepen their hope and sharpen their perception of the reign of God for which they hope. More precisely, that hope itself arises through the bodily, gestural, verbal, and symbolic ritual practices of the church.”

Note: When we read the Sacred text of our faith the liturgies of the faith take on their inherent power. Each year we come to the cycle of the Church year with new eyes. We encounter the resurrected Jesus in our incipient gradual rising from death to sin!  The ancient practices of which the Church Year is one is a matrix where we encounter God in real and immediate time. There clock time is subsumed by eternity. JWS

The cycle begins again this coming Sunday. Come join us.

*Maundy Thursday. Good Friday & Easter Eve