A quote, in holy week, from Thomas Merton, speaking of the great mystery of the faith that we are reliving in this season. Can we allow it to fully penetrate our thick, yet unconditioned hides? I pray we can. He speaks of the tradition of lighting the paschal fire, the Easter fire from flint, from which the paschal candle is lit (the light of Christ risen), from which each member lights a candle, carrying that same light of Life into themselves and into the world.
The first voice that speaks in the silent night is the cold flint. Out of the flint springs fire. The fire, making no sound, is the most eloquent preacher on this night that calls for no other sermon than liturgical action and mystery. That spark should spring from cold rock, reminds us that the strength, the life of God, is always deeply buried in the substance of all things. It reminds me that he has power to raise up children of Abraham even from the stones.
The light that leaps out of darkness, the fire that comes from stone, symbolizes Christ's conquest of death. He, Who is the source of all life, could never remain in death, could not see corruption. Death is not a reality, but the absence of a reality. And in Him there is nothing unreal. The fire that springs from the stone speaks, then, of His reality springing from the alienated coldness of our dead hearts, of our souls that have forgotten themselves, that have been exiled from themselves and from their God - and have lost their way in death. But there is nothing lost that God cannot find again. Nothing dead that cannot live again in the presence of His Spirit. No heart so dark, so hopeless, that it cannot be enlightened and brought back to itself, warmed back to the life of charity. -Thomas Merton, The New Man
We celebrate Holy Week and Easter tonight at Vine & Branches. Our liturgy won't be as "grand" as the one I've participated in in the past. I don't think it needs to be. It won't even be 3 or 4 nights, only one. I pray we enter into it, listen to it and hear it as it speaks to us. I pray we, again, receive His Risen Life.
"Then, if we cannot as yet think alike in all things, at least we may love alike. Herein we cannot possibly do amiss." John Wesley
"Keep your eyes on the crucifix, for Jesus without the cross
is a man without a mission, and the cross without Jesus
is a burden without a reliever." Fulton J. Sheen
"...I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be
completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self." Henri Nouwen
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