The Liturgical Year: April 2010 Archives

Wow, today is simply packed with significance.

It's Patriot's Day.

Concord Hymn

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's fifteen years since the OKC bombing:

It's the anniversary of Israel's re-birth:

And the "new" Pope marked the fifth anniversary since his election.

What a day filled with sadness and celebration!

I'm home this Easter morning. A family member has come down again with the Spring Plague that is going around.  I'm home and there are so many other places I wish I was.

I wish I was in church. I wish we had a church. I wish I wasn't in constant pain. I wish I didn't have to take medicines that cloud my faculties. I wish I was not so impatient. I wish I didn't cry at the drop of a hat. I wish I could spend just one day healthy.

I wonder if Christ had wishes, that night in the garden, the night he sweated blood.

How much did he know about what was to come?

Did he know just how much he was going to suffer? Was it the pain of torture that hurt him so or the betrayals and abandonment? Which was worse: the nails or the broken heart?

I don't know, but I do know that when he exclaimed, "It is finished," on the cross that it wasn't. It was far from finished.

The story didn't end on the cross, in the darkness, in the midst of a coming storm. It looked like the end, but things are seldom as they appear.

And as much as we are persuaded that the story ends with sunrise services, with frilly dresses, with fancy brunches, with pastel eggs, with fluffy bunnies, that is not the end either.

The end has already been revealed; it is no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. The end is no more pain.

Today is not the end; it is the remembrance of things past, the celebration of things to come. Today is the reminder of Christ's promise to those who take up the cross and follow him.

Our story doesn't end alone in the dark; it ends with jubilee.