Author: John W Gillis

Signs of the Times

Worshiping with the Stars

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The local United Church of Christ parish is having a “U2charist” on Sunday. This is billed as a worship service, but rather than being focused on worshiping God in Christ – as in “traditional” Eucharistic worship – this looks more like an event that celebrates celebrities. They’re even touting local “News” celebrity Liz Walker as guest speaker. As I understand it, these are essentially fund-raising events, with proceeds going to support efforts that fall somehow under the umbrella of the UN’s Mi...

Media & Culture

Celebrity Gossip and Moral Reasoning (part 1)

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“If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to serve as a horrible warning.” The preceding quote from Catherine Aird is always good for raising a laugh, and there’s a certain ring of truth to it. Having read the Bible, I’m well aware of the kind of role horrible warnings can play in human history. But any real estate agent will tell you that location is everything. Translation: context matters – a lot. Ty Burr wrote an Ideas piece published in the Boston Sunday Globe this past weekend that I found quite disturbing...

Scripture

Giving Thomas His Due

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Today is the day we hear in the Gospel reading about the Apostle Thomas doubting the resurrection until he sees and feels the wounds on the body of Christ. Much like Mary Magdalene, I think Thomas gets short shrift at the bar of history. It is true that Thomas was not with the other ten disciples when the Lord first appeared to them on Sunday evening. In his homily today, my pastor explained how it should serve as a lesson to us that his not being with the community in their time of trial following Jesus’ execution led to his missing the appearance...

Scripture

Mary Magdalene, Redux

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I kept thinking about Mary Magdalene today. I had a hard time finding an appropriate portrait of her to include in the post I wrote last night, and I got to thinking today that perhaps she hasn’t been very well represented over the years. She is often depicted in low-cut dresses, or in other ways linked to the idea of being a woman of loose morals. This is no doubt on account of her being associated with the woman of ill repute in Luke 7:36-50 who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears – of whom Jesus said she was forgiven because she loved ...

Scripture

Mary!

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The Gospel reading for Mass today (Jn 20.11-18) contains one of the great literary images in Scripture. Mary Magdalene, after having found the tomb of Jesus disturbed, and fetching Peter and John, stayed behind at the tomb, weeping, after the others had left. After conversing briefly with two angels she saw inside the tomb, she turned away from them in her tears, and in doing so, encountered the risen Jesus – whom she mistook for the gardener. After a few brief words, she turned away from him, too. And then Jesus spoke a single word to her that who...

Music

A Topographic Easter Tradition

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Staying on my theme of music I listen to on the holy days… I have an Easter morning musical tradition that stretches back a lot further than the 10 years or so I’ve been listening to Gorecki’s 3rd Symphony on Good Friday. I don’t remember when I started listening to Yes’ Tales From Topographic Oceans on Easter morning, but it goes well back into my murky pseudo-Christian (proto-Christian?) past, into those pre-Church days when I thought that Christianity was something you believed – maybe even something ontologically t...

Music

Good Friday: The Other Mothers’ Day

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As has been my custom for several years, I listened to Henryk Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) this afternoon, before attending the Good Friday liturgy. This is a remarkable work that never fails to move me. I don’t listen to it very often during the rest of the year, but it has become a Good Friday staple for me. Though Gorecki himself insists that the work has much broader meaning (no doubt), it is difficult for me to listen to it without being overwhelmed by thoughts of the insane brutality of the Nazi death camps in ...

Religion & Society

Good Friday Intercessions

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While listening to the general intercessions today during the Good Friday liturgy, I couldn’t help but think about all the hubbub that was raised recently when Pope Benedict made the Latin-rite Mass more widely available. I had some good, mentally stable friends tell me that the Pope’s gesture signaled the beginning of the end of the Second Vatican Council reforms; that the priests would soon turn their backs – literally and figuratively – on the people; that the Church was about to become a fortress of spiritual repression, where...

Family Life

Gerry Gillis: Rest in Peace

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My uncle Gerry Gillis passed away Saturday, at the age of 80, in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. Gerry was quite a guy. When Joyce and I took Kelly & Leigh to visit Nova Scotia during the summer of 1997, we stayed with Gerry at the family home on Hawthorne Street, where he and his wife Bubby had raised their nine children – the same home where my grandfather had settled with his clan, after leaving Sydney for Antigonish. Gerry and Bubby were the most gracious hosts. While walking downtown from the house after our first night there, Joyce told me she h...

Music

A Good Hymn is Hard to Find

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The parish Lenten Mission began tonight, and I got to the church a minute or so late for the start. The congregation was singing the opening hymn – what it was I have blessedly forgotten, but it was one of those carnival tunes of fairly recent vintage that we used to regularly not too long ago. As I ducked into a pew near the back, I was met by the distinct aroma of moth balls. The presider was a retired bishop, who seemed to give a very thoughtful reflection (I had trouble hearing a lot of it), but the music we used all night was awful. I got to w...