Not Holy Wednesday, in case you were guessing. Spy Wednesday is today in the Great Week. Egeria provides the answer why. Following the same worship schedule like the past two days, Bishop Cyril, after the evening worship and blessing in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher’s main nave or sanctuary,
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Welcome to Holy Tuesday, the third day of the Great Week. For Egeria this day mirrored yesterday except for the very end. She describes a special hike after the final evening blessing back up Mount Olivet to a small church near the Gethsemane, very late, as Bishop Cyril read from
Continue readingOur earliest Christian forebears (often called the “primitive church” by scholars who seemingly never perceived the derogatory implication of that term) lived in a terribly brutal world. Recall that while both Jesus and the Apostle Paul enjoyed financial and personal support from wealthy male and female patrons throughout their respective
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Yes, you can say with me slowly…Hep-DOM-eh-dare-ree, a hybrid Greek-Latin term meaning People Who Kept a Week. Today we begin to keep the week of all Christian weeks, the holiest, most sacral chronology of the entire Christian year. Today we transform into pilgrims on an intensive peregrination of faith, which
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Thank you for joining me on this 40 day journey of daily Lenten reflections. When we began, Mother Emily encouraged me to commit to a daily discipline of writing, which has been far more intensive and far more gratifying than I ever imagined. Thank you so much for your kind
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We’ll let the Bard ponder whether to be or not to be, just one big ontological headache if you ask me. That’s not our question as we transition from the Lenten season, speaking of ontology for goodness’ sakes (Okay Lenten Reflection Self Editor here…we apologize for late night, rectoral, “he
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Spiritual habits come in all shapes and sizes….not all concern deprivation or some acrobatically ascetic practice. For many right now, as well as for me, a good night’s sleep is as elusive and as salutary as any habit one could adopt. And may I postulate soul comfort also? Music has
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As we progress towards Holy Week, I am skipping the very tempting April Fool’s urge here due to our current moment to focus upon getting ready for next week. Our final Lenten habit, one so familiar to Roman and Anglican Catholics and so odd to more Protestant and evangelical folk,
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Well, it finally hit the other night. This entire moment, the generational ramifications, the pain of losing work and pay for millions, my options for any retirement, the hard-earned fiscal reserves of our church over 20 years, the suffering of those both diagnosed with and those battling against the virus.
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So during this pre-Holy Week week we will be preparing ourselves for Holy Week itself, the Triduum and the Easter cycle of celebration itself. And yes, we will be learning some new Easter vocabulary words as we move towards Easter and a surprise announcement regarding this Lenten reflection daily blog.
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