Eastertide Daily Devotionals

When?!  When does this isolation conclude?!  When can we get back to work?!  When is there an effective treatment?!  When do we get a vaccine?!  When??!!  Well, let’s turn to an authority on schedules for more insight….we welcome into the Eastertide Reflection studio...

Luke 24 is truly the scriptural gift which just keeps on giving!  But sadly we have reached the end…or have we?!  Today we (kinda) close with Luke 24:44-53, again, all on this very extended Easter Day.  Again we come geographically close to Jerusalemite churches, the...

It strains credulity that all of Luke 24 occurs in a single day…and Luke presents it exactly like that!  Whew!  And hey, since we have 50 days of Eastertide I don’t mind pacing us through these magnificent resurrection passages!  Today let’s reflect upon Luke...

Yesterday we explored Luke’s traditional Easter narrative to begin Luke 24.  But today, we depart any extant resurrection text to happily traverse uniquely Lukan material, a hugely consequential story to our Prayer Book worship and indeed to the entire catholic...

Between the evangelist Luke and his mentor Paul, the two provide roughly 1/4th of all Christian scripture.  Their perspective is unique and constitutive for any serious believer.  While Paul evidently felt no need to narrate his encounter with the Risen Jesus, Luke...

Matthew ends his resurrection chapter, and his gospel story, with a bang!  After the geologic, tectonic,  meteorological and supernal fireworks earlier in chapter 28, that’s really saying something!  But there are two very significant elements of Matthew’s second and...

Yep, we begin with a Carole King homage, and it is beautiful!  In Matthew’s Gospel, we really can feel the earth move under our feet, and it sure beats the Walking Dead reference after all!  What in the hey?!  For centuries, Matthew’s Gospel enjoyed the pre-eminent...

Following exploration of the New Testament’s two earliest resurrection sources, Pauline and Markan in that order, I pause before continuing to Matthew, Luke, John and others.  Have you ever wondered why Paul did not author a gospel?  Have you ever wondered why there...

Oh, the Indiana Jones’ tropes will fly as we tackle Mark’s secondary and tertiary endings!  While scholars debate endlessly about Mark 16:8b-19 (just examine your study bible notes to confirm), I’ve been waiting for weeks to drop this Raiders of the Lost Ark ode to...

Our Vicar Emeritus always loved the Collect of the Day imploring us to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest God’s word!  He joked one year about removing that consequential comma between read and mark thus rendering the Collect’s direction to read the Gospel of Mark,...

The renowned 20th century Scottish evangelical biblical scholar Dr. F.F. Bruce authored his magnum opus on the Apostle Paul with the best title ever!  Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free was Dr. Bruce’s masterwork contribution to 20th century Pauline studies,...

Although chronologically out of order, it seems logical to keep all of our Pauline resurrection moments together.  Yesterday we visited with Paul’s own account of encountering the Risen Christ, but Paul is laconic in his several citations of this life-changing...

The very best Easter acclamation I ever heard came from our young daughter very early one Easter morning as she excitedly rushed into our bedroom, realizing what morning it was.  “Daddy, Daddy, he’s…..Rosen!” she exclaimed, teaching me that verbal past tense is a...

My mother was an accomplished lay minister, a powerful spiritual director, longtime practitioner of guided spiritual direction, a daily scripture reader, and a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology when women were just breaking into that field.  She would often teach in her...

Uh, er, after yesterday’s deep philological dive into Easter vocabulary I appreciate the three readers willing to continue with me here….ah, em, we’ll try to not geek like that too often.  And before anyone draws the direct reference of today’s reflection title with...

Many of you have commented upon my vocabulary in these reflections, for which I thank my parents and several brutal English teachers from Saint Mary’s Episcopal Day School and Jesuit High School in Tampa.  Good writers like C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and others have...

Our liturgical worship is predicated upon a theological chronology witnessing to core elements of the life of Jesus in a calendar format.  You may notice certain numbers which attract sacral attention for a multitude of reasons embedded in our church calendar.  The...

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!  Now we pivot from the somber Lenten season and intense Holy Week, what Egeria called the Great Week, to the Great 50 Days of Easter I will call simply Eastertide.  I pray fervently that we also pivot from the darkness of COVID-19 to the...

LET US KEEP THE FEAST, ALLELUIA! Now we can, finally, share the Alleluia once again!  Now those hebdomadarii can finally eat after the Great Week concludes with Sunday feasting, and so can we!  For 50 days no one in Egeria’s world fasted, an astonishingly efficient...