One of the things I love about the week after Easter is that the Church relates to each day of the octave as though it is Easter Day. In the Preface of Easter I, the priest is directed to pray during the octave: “We praise you with greater joy than ever on this Easter day when Christ became our paschal sacrifice.” (Unfortunately most of the priests where I attend daily Mass pray “in this Easter season.”) In the Liturgy of the Hours, we pray Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer of Easter Day all week. To me this is a foretaste of heaven when each day will be as the first. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it!”
“Let us long for those who are longing for us, hasten to those who are waiting for us, and ask those who look for our coming to intercede for us. . . . Thus, what is beyond our own powers to obtain will be granted through their intercession.” (St. Bernard of Clairvaux)
My youngest cousin on my mother’s side passed away yesterday from a brain aneurysm. She was only 50 years old. This is the song that comes to mind, a poem without words: A Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Here’s a photo taken by Sr. Kelly from inside a friend’s barn looking out. It makes me think of Lewis’ Last Battle. Looking out from earth to the heaven that is waiting for us.
One of the things I love about the week after Easter is that the Church relates to each day of the octave as though it is Easter Day. In the Preface of Easter I, the priest is directed to pray during the octave: “We praise you with greater joy than ever on this Easter day when Christ became our paschal sacrifice.” (Unfortunately most of the priests where I attend daily Mass pray “in this Easter season.”) In the Liturgy of the Hours, we pray Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer of Easter Day all week. To me this is a foretaste of heaven when each day will be as the first. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it!”
Still thinking a lot about our Homeland, and, of course, about my aunt’s journey there. I was thumbing through my collection of Jessica Power’s poetry and found this most apt poem. (Poetry is one of the solaces in my life.)
Return of the prodigal son (Tissot)
The Homecoming
The spirit, newly freed from earth,
is all amazed at the surprise
of her belonging: suddenly
as native to eternity
to see herself, to realize
the heritage that lets her be
at home where all this glory lies.
By naught foretold could she have guessed
such welcome home: the robe, the ring,
music and endless banqueting,
these people hers; this place of rest
known, as of long remembering
herself a child of God and pressed
with warm endearments to His breast.
~Jessica Powers, The Selected Poetry of Jessica Powers, p. 53
The same will be true for us: the robe, the ring, the banqueting, and best of all, the warm endearments as we are pressed to His breast.
For obvious reasons (my aunt’s death and it being the end of the liturgical year), I’ve been thinking about our Homeland. As Christians, it can be all too easy to forget that we are citizens of heaven first and of our country second. This quote from what looks like will be a great novel, emphasizes this point. (Read “Christian” instead of “Jew”.) The conversation is between a young German and his teacher, a Jew, in the early 1900’s.
“Does it make any difference, being a Jew?”
Dr. Mendel looked down at the tablecloth, the plush tablecloth that had been there all of Max’s life, and smoothed it with his familiar hand. He did not answer for some time.
“Ah”, he said. “At last we come to it. Yes, Max, it does. It makes a great deal of difference. A Jew does not ever quite belong to the country in which he lives. I have been a French Jew, and I have been a German Jew, but I have never been a Frenchman or a German. The Jews are a people who carry their homeland with them wherever they go because it is in their souls and not in the streets of cities or in the villages and fields and woods where other people allow them to live.”
“Is their homeland where God lives?”
Dr. Mendel raised his head and looked searchingly at Max.
“It should be, Max, it should always be, perhaps for everyone. But it is not always so, even with Jews. They also, as other people do, often make another homeland for their souls. Perhaps it is France, or Germany, or science, or music, or the making of much money. Then, because they have lost God, they have lost the distance that should be precious to them, the distance from which it should be easier to look calmly at all these passions, the loves and hatreds and fears, which drive wars and draw frontiers and arm people to fight over them.” (Lucy Beckett, A Postcard from the Volcano, p. 57)
As they say in the traffic report, this post is thanks to “tipster” Lupe. Lupe grabbed me after Mass yesterday and asked me if I had read the Office of Readings for the day–which I hadn’t yet. (The Office of Readings is part of the Liturgy of the Hours.) So, of course, I did as soon as I got home. The readings this time of year, as we close the liturgical year, are mostly about the Lord coming again or about our going to meet Him in death. The second reading for yesterday, Wednesday of the thirty-third week of Ordinary Time, is from a sermon by St. Augustine. He preaches about the sure promise we have of seeing the Lord, but now we walk by faith, not by sight.
We walk by faith, and not by sight. When will it be by sight? Beloved, says John, we are now the sons of God; what we shall be has not yet been revealed, but we know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. When this prophecy is fulfilled, then it will be by sight.
Then Augustine goes on to point out that we have great reason for rejoicing–and the reason for our rejoicing is that this promise will be fulfilled:
Nevertheless, even now, before that vision comes to us, or before we come to that vision, let us rejoice in the Lord; for it is no small reason for rejoicing to have a hope that will some day be fulfilled.
This got me thinking about the many things we put our hope in, and how often we are then disappointed when they are not fulfilled. That can lead us to discouragement and to an attitude of “Why hope?” It is true that we will face many disappointments in life–but this one thing we can–and must–put our hope in: that we shall see Him as He is. This is a hope that will one day be fullfilled. We–you–will see Him as He is. And that is no small reason for rejoicing.
One of the things I love about the week after Easter is that the Church relates to each day of the octave as though it is Easter Day. In the Preface of Easter I, the priest is directed to pray during the octave: “We praise you with greater joy than ever on this Easter day when Christ became our paschal sacrifice.” (Unfortunately most of the priests where I attend daily Mass pray “in this Easter season.”) In the Liturgy of the Hours, we pray Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer of Easter Day all week. To me this is a foretaste of heaven when each day will be as the first. “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it!”
God rest her soul and comfort those who love her.
Witnesses to Hope 