The liturgical year culminates this week in the celebration of the joyous and triumphant solemnity of Christ the King. In the Entrance Antiphon, the Church echoes the cry of the numberless host of heaven, witnessed to in the Revelation to St John, acclaiming in loud voices the worthiness of the Lamb that was slain (Rev 5:12). In the Collect, She prays “that the whole creation, set free from slavery,” might ceaselessly praise God – thus joining...
A friendly hand fell lightly upon my shoulder one January morning several years ago, as I was spending a few extra minutes before the tabernacle, after finishing Morning Prayer. I was running behind schedule that day, but since at least the beginning of the new school year, my old friend had apparently also been coming to the church quite a bit later than she used to, because it seemed to have been the better part of a year since we’d seen each other. I’d wondered about her now and again over the previous few months – wondering if her h...
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...