Finally, we come to the last and longest season of the Christian year – Ordinary Time.
Even though most of us think of heaven and earth as distinct places, we also believe there can be “thin places” where the two are very close, overlapping even.
The Feast of the Ascension of our Lord has traditionally been celebrated on a Thursday, the fortieth day after Easter.
From a young age, I was taught that the ascension of Jesus meant that Jesus was the first human to ascend to heaven, and that we, his followers, would one day go to be with him there.
In Ezekiel’s dream, the breath of God awakens and reconnects the bones of the fragmented selves, renews their flesh and returns to them their own life’s breath before placing them back on their own soil.
Perhaps our perennial instinct to share food, drink and story as a response to grief and loss points to a gospel mystery in which we are all caught up.
In the resurrection of Jesus, we perceive what could be considered the big bang of God’s new creation exploding, as it were, as a renewing, recreating power in the midst of the old…
I distinctly remember the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday as a strange day.
“Now is the time to loosen, cast away The useless weight of everything but love.” -Malcolm Guite
“Grace is revealed in suffering, power is displayed through weakness, glory is disguised in humiliation.”
Troubadour: a lyric poet sent by one (usually of the king’s court) with a message of chaste love to another.
This day has been called the highwater point of the history of salvation…
It is wonderfully poetic that Patrick first went to Ireland involuntarily as a slave-shepherd, then later returned voluntarily as a servant-shepherd…
For the Eastern Church, Lent begins with Clean Monday…
Once a year, Ash Wednesday and the wider Lenten fast provide the collective opportunity to notice, confess and address our willful opposition to love…
Saint Antony of the Desert is widely considered to be the father of desert monasticism.