Like Advent and Christmas, Epiphany enjoys some customary hymnody. I am pleased to share this first significant American contribution to the classic holiday hymnody of the Episcopal Church. Yep, We Three Kings of Orient (the hymn’s technical name) is thoroughly domestic! Lyrics, ‘Merican! Tune, ‘Merican! Composer of both (quite rare
Continue reading
Dangit, dangit, dangit! Why O Lord, why?! Of all the sections of Egeria’s Journal, our almost sole, priceless 4th century AD/CE eyewitness to the creative Christian worship arising straight out of the ground in Jerusalem under the great bishop Cyril of Jerusalem, her excursus on Jerusalemite and Bethlehemite Epiphany worship
Continue reading
The First Sunday of Epiphany is anchored by the final Incarnation cycle theophany, a shockingly intimate and surprising appearance of God at the Baptism of our Lord. This day always saddens me a bit. Liturgical time is so compressed, squeezing the entire salvific drama into 52 Sundays and a few
Continue reading
Hard to fit all this consequential Epiphany material into just one day! Magic’s just like that! So, our Matthean magi dressed up by Christian legendariums then…(and legendariums are blocks of narrative material of unsure, mythical or non-evidentiary attribution!). The three Mag…no, wait, oops, Matthew never enumerated three. Legendary. Trinitarian overlay?
Continue reading
“The Magi were not kings, but kings of kings!” I still remember that impressive claim of the Reverend Mark Link, S.J. (Society of Jesus, or Jesuit) from my 9th grade theology textbook These Stones Will Shout. From Tampa Jesuit High School’s drab Gulf Coast concrete block walls all those years
Continue reading
Let’s continue today to recover and unpack from our Epiphany theology overload from yesterday. Theological hangovers take time from which to properly recuperate, like the brain freeze from drinking a slurpee too fast in hot weather! Slow and easy here….at the very heart of Epiphany, and indeed of the entire
Continue reading
O….M….G!!!! My head is spinning, dear readers, help anchor me to this earth!! Stop, stop roller coaster of church traditions, I want to get off! First and foremost, welcome to the formal close of the Christmas season (kinda) and opening of the third and final portion of the Incarnation trilogy
Continue reading
A point of personal privilege, dear readers, if anyone is still reading after our first Epiphany-geek-fest overload earlier today. Today is my 28th anniversary of ordination to the Sacred Order of Priests in the Episcopal Church. I had desired ordination during Advent but the Bishop’s earliest convenience was January, so
Continue reading
Whew! That’s a big push since Halloween, All Saints Day, Thanksgiving, Advent, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Christmastide and now, the Eve of the Epiphany. A contested and elongated national election, a new associate Supreme Court justice, a third pandemic wave, two vaccines approved in record time, at least three meteorological and
Continue reading
We cannot leave Christmastide without a word about literary Christmases! Every year the hallowed books come out: Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree, a Little House Christmas, the Grinch, a Charlie Brown Christmas (the adult Lucy is selling real estate in the Vail Valley today), various Nights Before Christmas, Rudolph and of
Continue reading
