An Easter Sermon from Pusey House

The following Easter Sunday sermon from the Principal of Pusey House hit my inbox this morning and soon after touched my heart.  It is profound and explains how the resurrection affects us very well. At the same time it reflects the difficulties Oxford and England and the world are going through now.

Imagine Dr. George Westhaver standing alone, alone on Easter Sunday, in the Chapel of the Resurrection in Pusey House addressing his online congregation via Discord . . .

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death, And upon those in the tombs, Bestowing life!

Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death in us, and in whatever way we find ourselves bound in graveclothes, touched by death or despair or fear, giving life, life eternal and full. 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is a great joy to have arrived at this day with you. Christ is Risen, Alleluia. I can hear you all crying out, the Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia. 

We have arrived together at this day. It has been a strange and unsettling pilgrimage. We have been forced into the desert in a new way. We have been compelled to suffer isolation from one another and from communion in the Body of Christ. We’ve been removed from the normal form of communion with one another, and we’ve been removed from communion in the Sacrament of our Lord’s body, this particular form of his sacramental touch and presence has been taken from us. 

We’ve been invited not just to suffer all this, but to find in it the shape of the cross of our Saviour – to lay our lives down, not just to have them taken from us. 

Conscious of those facing danger, sickness, anxiety and death, we’ve also been invited to fellowship with the Man of Sorrows who weeps over Jerusalem, ‘O all ye that pass by, Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow’ (Lamentations 1). Our Lord weeps not only for himself but for all that ravages the life of the earthly city, for all that threatens the people for whom he lays down his life. His sacred tears were shed in love not just for the sins of Jerusalem, but for those facing darkness and the shadow of death, in illness, or in fear, or in anxiety, in these past weeks, and in all time to come. We have kept vigil, first in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then at the cross, and finally, we have kept vigil in the night ‘whereof David said: “Behold the night is as clear as the day: then shall my night be turned into day.”’ 

We have arrived. Christ is Risen from the dead, Alleluia. But where have we arrived? The confusion and turmoil in the Gospel today can be a great encouragement to us. The Saints, Mary Magdalene, Peter and John, come to the tomb, but only John seems to grasp what is happening, and that no doubt imperfectly. The resurrection does not come with easy resolution, but with confusion and perplexity. It’s a wonderful historical picture. It is also a picture of the way in which the Resurrection is not a simple answer which sorts everything out. On the one hand, it is finished, the Lord has raised up the new temple of his Body in which we live and move and have our being. 

On the other hand, what is given in the resurrection comes to us in turmoil and perplexity. We never leave this behind, but rather we discover more of the gift and reality of the Resurrection by entering in, again and again, the confusion of the first disciples of our Lord. We discover more of the gift and reality of the Resurrection for ourselves and for one another by making Mary Magdalene’s words our own – ‘they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him’ (John 20). When we find ourselves seeking the Lord who appears to be taken from us, he finds us precisely there to invite us to know him and to be loved by him in the power and presence of his resurrection. Alleluia. 

In his letter to the Colossians, St Paul also speaks to us, both to tell us what has happened, and to help us to understand why the gift of the Risen life comes with perplexity as well as promise, with anxiety as well as with answers. 

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. ... For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

The great work has been accomplished, finished for us, and yet we must seek it. It is given, and we must find it.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

Where do we find the life which is hid with Christ in God? God is Spirit, but since the Incarnation, God also has a human body (I speak as a fool). We find our lives in the risen body of Christ, the same body, wonderfully transformed, by which he lifts us up, draws near, carries, touches us, feeds us. ‘And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain’ (I Cor 15:14)The Resurrection of Christ is his vindication and victory, and the resurrection of Christ is our vindication and victory over all that takes away life. 

  

The Christian hope is not only the promise of eternal life. Tom Wright, sometime bishop of Durham, one of the great scholars of the Scriptures, and now retired to Oxford, emphasises that we don’t look forward to ‘life after death’, but “life after ‘life after death’”. Our Blessed Lord’s words to the thief are the foundation of Christian hope: ‘Today, you will be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23.43). This is the beginning of the Christian hope, not the end. There, ‘we shall rest and we shall see, we shall see and we shall love, we shall love [and we shall be loved, we shall know and] we shall praise’. But this is still only the beginning of Christian hope, not the end. We don’t look forward to ‘life after death’, however rich and full beyond our imagining, we look forward to “life after ‘life after death’.” In the collect of the burial office in the Book of Common Prayer, the priest prays that our loved-one departed may first ‘rest in’ Christ. But this is only the beginning; ‘our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul’ comes only at ‘the general Resurrection in the last day’. Our share in the Resurrection is what is hid for is with Christ in God. 

Why does it matter that ‘we believe in the resurrection of the body’, not just for Christ, but for ourselves? If one has experienced great suffering in the body, or if one has struggled with poor health, or simply the trials of growing old, one may be tempted, like the Greeks to whom St Paul spoke in Athens, to see the body as a cage, better left behind. The poet Dante, in his Paradiso, gives one of the best answers to the why it matters. In the Heaven of the Sun, Dante speaks to King Solomon about the resurrection of the body. Solomon, is the traditional author of the Song of Songs, the great love song of the soul longing for God, of the Bride seeking the Bridegroom Jesus Christ, of each one of us seeking that life which is hid with Christ in God.

According to Dante, the souls in paradise are already robed in bliss, but when they rise again with their bodies, they will be more blessed still. But how is this possible? Hearing Dante’s question, the souls around him dance with more fervour and zeal, and Solomon answers on their behalf:

When, blessed and glorified,
the flesh is robed about us once again, 

we shall be lovelier for being whole. 

We shall be lovelier for being whole. The soul is not complete without the body, and the body is dead without the soul. God is pure spirit, but human beings are not whole and complete as purely spiritual beings. After death, the souls of the faithful are at rest. They enjoy the vision of God, even if this vision and this joy is not complete. But being in heaven as spirits is not our final destination. It is only at the resurrection of the body, when the bodies which we once had are changed into a spiritual body, to be like the glorious body of Christ, that we shall be whole, ‘more perfectly ourselves’, and lovelier for being whole. 

Does this mean that the resurrection of the body is only a hope for an impossibly distant future? We hope that we will rise with Christ at the last day, our perfect consummation and bliss, but even now, we are risen with him. What does this mean? Perhaps it will be more clear if we consider what a denial of the Resurrection of the Body would mean about the things which give us joy now. For those who believe in the Resurrection of the body, the happy meal with family and friends, the cup of tea or glass of wine, our attachment to particular places and particular people, little pleasures help us to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. To live as a people who believe in the resurrection of the body ‘is to love Bag End and the beer from a particularly good harvest’; to love a human being is to love the body; ‘To love the body is to love the small, the local, the particular. It is to love those things enjoyed by the body’. C S Lewis describes these day to day pleasures as ‘shafts of the glory’ and ‘channels of adoration’ which reveal our Risen life. To reject the resurrection of the body is to deny something important in these creature comforts. If we are destined to be pure spirit, our delight in a beautiful garden or a beautiful landscape, as well as our delight in the meal with friends and little pleasures are just distractions, whistling against the dark, fleeting things which may make life less painful, but which don’t tell us about the lives which our hid with Christ in God. But to believe in the resurrection of the body means that we expect the things which delight us in the body to help us to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. It is the belief in the Resurrection of the Body which makes it possible for the images of love and springtime in the Song of Songs to speak to us of the love of each of us for the Bridegroom Jesus Christ: ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come ... the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away’ (Song of Solomon 2.11-13). For those who know that they are risen with Christ, this is an invitation to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. For the Greeks to whom St Paul spoke in Athens, for whom the body is a shell to be discarded and left behind, this is just poetic fancy, singing against the dark. 

In the words of Hillaire Belloc, modified slightly by Bp Robert Barron, ‘Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, / There’s laughter and [music] and good red wine’.

Belloc’s words also help us to make sense of the strange turn in St Paul’s words to the Colossians and to us. ‘Red wine’ is not only a way to find our lives hid with Christ in God, the same red wine can be the path to destruction, family break-down and misery. We could say the same for many of the comforts which delight us – they can lead us to apprehend the spiritual riches which are ours in Christ Jesus, or they can send us on a path to darkness. Our perfect consummation and bliss is in the resurrection of the body, but it is not merely sensual. The Resurrection life does not consist in more food, more drink, more of whatever thrills us: ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body’.  The ‘earthly body’, thanks be to God, is not the same as the ‘heavenly body’.  ‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed’; this ‘mortal must put on immortality’ when ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’ (1 Cor 15). So says St Paul, Mortify – put to death on the cross – your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. We cannot leave behind the disciplines of Lent in Lent. We will keep the feast, we will celebrate, and our celebrations can help us to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. And yet, our lives are hid with Christ; the spiritual disciples reveal what is hidden in what is right in front of us. As the goodness, the wisdom, and the love of our Risen Lord possess us more and more, we will find that life which is hid in him. 

Let us cast our cares and concerns upon him; he is able to bear them. And let us seek, on this great day, and the days to come, the life which is hid for us with Christ in God. The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, our Risen Lord speaks to us: ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away’, and in this coming away, in this dying, the things which delight us now may be channels of adoration and a path of find the life which is hid with Christ in God. 

Keble on The Sight of God Incarnate

The apostles saw Christ, but were not yet members of His body.  We are members of His body, but do not yet see Him.  These two things, which are now separated, are to be united in the other world and, being united, they will make us happy forever.

--John Keble, from “The Sight of God Incarnate”, a sermon preached on an Easter Sunday. (Volume 6, sermon 12 of his collected sermons)

What a great hope indeed!  And may this Easter season, with the hope that comes from the Resurrection of Christ and of his people, be a joyous one for all my readers.

When I First Knew Something Was Wrong With Pope Francis

By now traditional Catholics know too well that Pope Francis is dreadful in too many ways.  Not to brag – one would rather be wrong about such things – but I knew very early on there was something wrong with him.  How?

His first Easter Vigil was less than three weeks after he became Pope.  It would have been logical that he’d just go with Benedict’s excellent liturgy.  Instead, Francis shortened it.

Francis processed into a darkened and silent Saint Peter's Basilica at the start of the service, in which the faithful recall the period between Christ's crucifixion on Good Friday and resurrection on Easter Sunday.

One of the most dramatic moments of the Easter Vigil service that usually follows - when the pope would share the light of his candle with others until the entire basilica twinkled - was shortened this year as were some of the Old Testament readings.

The Vatican has said these provisions were in keeping with Francis' aim to not have his Masses go on too long.

Thus, early on, Francis showed his utter lack of sound priorities.  The Easter Vigil is not a service one cuts short.  For one thing, part of the drama of it is its deliberate pace.  In the primitive church, it could go all night.  And so early in his papacy didn’t he have better things to do than chop up the Easter Vigil?

But Francis rushes in and starts undoing the excellent liturgy of the best liturgical Pope of our lifetimes. 

Yes, it was then that I already knew something was wrong with Francis.

I pray my Roman Catholic friends have a blessed Holy Week and Easter anyway.

Against a Fixed Date for Easter

With Easter very near now, I think this a good time to denounce talk of fixing the date of Easter.  I would rain imprecations upon those proposing such an enormity, but Good Friday has helped me to be charitable.  Yes, the Lord uses the church calendar to work miracles.

Speaking of which, this Good Friday is one illustration of why fixing Easter is such a bad idea.  The rare correspondence of Good Friday with the normal date for the Feast of the Annunciation has inspired much worthy contemplation through the centuries, including from the Bede and John Donne.  And yesterday I mentioned less worthy (but fun!) speculations of the apocalyptically minded.

We’ve been fortunate to experience this conjunction twice, in 2005 and this year.  But it will not occur again until 2157 . . . or never if the liturgical vandals have their way.

And this potential loss would be just a part of the loss of tradition, the loss of links with the church through the ages should we fix the date of Easter.

In a wonderful post on the conjunction of Good Friday and Annunciation, A Clerk in Oxford contemplates this loss well:

As a medievalist, I found the discussion of the question of fixing a date for Easter a few months ago rather depressing. If there were any theological arguments under consideration, no one seemed to think it worthwhile to articulate them publicly; discussion focused mostly on solving the non-existent problem that some people (schools, maybe?) apparently find a movable date for Easter a bit inconvenient. I've never in my life heard anyone complain about being inconvenienced by the date of Easter, so I really struggle to imagine who considers this a pressing issue. And for that, churches would break with nearly two thousand years of tradition, a complex system worked out with great care and thought and invested over centuries with profound meaning. The fixed dates proposed for Easter are in April, so never again would Good Friday fall on the feast of the Annunciation. So much loss for so little gain!

Indeed.  May one of the lessons of this Easter be that it does not need to be fixed!

May all my readers have a glorious Easter.

Post-Easter Depression

Some (most?) interpretations of the Gospel accounts have Peter despondent after the Resurrection of Christ.  The account of John 21 is often taken this way.  Verse 17 certainly seems to indicate that Peter’s grief over denying Christ three times persisted.

Right now, I can relate.  No, I did not deny Christ three times during the Triduum.  But in the midst of it, right before the Easter Vigil, I had a very sudden and very unexpected falling out with a friend.  He did not even talk to me or let me know he was unhappy about a matter.  I got the news second hand.

With 20-20 hindsight, I would have done something differently, yes.  But I cannot reasonably take the blame for the falling out.  How can I when I was clueless there was a problem in the first place? Nonetheless, I’ve been moody and fatigued since.  I’ve still experienced the joy of the Resurrection.  But it has been fleeting.

Easter reminds us that Christ and His people are victorious in the end.  But we remain human.  Dealing with disappointments, wrongs, and hurts from ourselves and from others can still drag us down, Great Fifty Days or not.  Peter experienced that.  And to a lesser extent I now am, too.

Let us not skip Holy Week

I wished I had something profound to say in the middle of Holy Week.  Perhaps my lack is out of fatigue as I traveled yesterday with some friends to visit a friend in a nursing home.  In any case, I urge readers not to skip Holy Week, particularly the darkness of Thursday through Saturday, of the Last Supper and betrayal, of the arrest and trials, of the crucifixion and burial, in order to rush to Easter.

In most of my pre-Anglican years, that is more or less what I did.  It is not that I despised the Lord’s Passion; I most certainly did not.  An emphasis on Holy Week was just not part of my worship tradition and had not yet become a part of me.

During those years, Easter also did not mean as much to me as it does now.  That is no coincidence.  Yes, I knew well that my life is bound up in Christ’s resurrected life.  But I do not think one can fully appreciate the light and joy of Easter until one goes through the darkness of Holy Week, and of Lent for that matter.  And that I did not do.

Carl Trueman has written on how excising the dark and the tragic from our worship impoverishes it and ourselves.  I think that applies double to Holy Week.  As the risk of using a banal illustration, a movie that proceeds straight from happiness through happiness to a happy ending is likely to be cloying and forgettable.  Not only is life not that way, but the dark times help us to appreciate God’s light.  Neither good movies nor good religion skip over them.  It is not for nothing that early in his Gospel, St. John proclaims, “The light shines in the darkness.”

So my humble recommendation to those who want to have a joyous Easter is first to have a contemplative and, yes, dark Holy Week.  Observe and think upon the Passion of our Lord, who – as the Collect for Holy Monday notes – “went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified.”  Therefore let the rest of this prayer be our prayer and practice in life and worship.  “Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Let the Collect for Holy Wednesday be our prayer also.

Assist us mercifully with thy help, O Lord God of our salvation; that we may enter with joy upon the meditation of those mighty acts, whereby thou hast given unto us life and immortality; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Easter, Liturgy, and Manipulation

During the Easter Vigil Saturday night, I noticed my heart just was not into it and joyful as in past years.  Perhaps, it was because Good Friday services somewhat exhausted me; I don’t know.  But whatever the reason, I did not like being that way.

But then I noticed a turning of my heart during the renewal of the baptismal vows.  I think the gumption of making so many vows I cannot even come close to fulfilling without God’s help reminded me that I have purpose in God’s plan . . . and reminded me to exercise my will and man up.

And then the remaining liturgy and an excellent sermon reminded me of the glory and numerous benefits of the Resurrection of our Lord.  For the rest of the service, I was my joyful Easter self.

That reminds me of one benefit of good liturgy.  It appeals to Christian hearts whether they be joyful or downcast and does so with the basics of the faith and with beauty.  Good liturgy does not manipulative with emotional appeals.

And that last point is important.  If, for some ungodly reason, the service would have, say, burst into singing “Celebrate Jesus”, I would have resisted and recoiled into gloom, as indeed I did more than once years ago in response to that cloying song.  It’s not for nothing that Proverbs warns of singing happy happy songs to a troubled heart. (Proverbs 25:20)  Manipulative worship often backfires.

On Easter itself, one family attending had just lost a father and grandfather that very morning.  What if our Easter service has been one big happy-clappyfest?  Of course, our service had extra rejoicing on Easter, but there was still plenty of room to worship where one was in life, as is always the case with good liturgy.  And the rector prayed for and laid hands on that family. There wasn’t an atmosphere in which one must be happy or else.

So on this Easter Week, in addition to being thankful for the Resurrection of our Lord, I am thankful for good liturgy that does not manipulate but lets one get a grip on the glory of that event at one’s own pace wherever one finds himself in life.

The Bittersweetness of the Ascension

Last night during Holy Communion, it hit me what a bittersweet celebration is the Feast of Ascension.

Yes, the Ascension of our Lord into Heaven to take the throne and to intercede for us is glorious and comforting.  Certainly, his departure and ascension is for our good as he said. (John 16:7)

But still, he is not visibly with us.  And the church yearns to be with him.  Yes, he is always with us.  But it is not the same as seeing him there beside us as the disciples did during the 40 days after his resurrection.  We miss him, one might say.

That departure is symbolized by the Paschal Candle. Back at the beginning of the Easter Vigil comes one of the most dramatic moments of the liturgical year when the lit candle is carried into a darkened sanctuary with the chant “The Light of Christ!”.  (I’ve been fortunate to get to carry out that task the past two years.)  The candle stays lit during the 40 days (or theoretically so.  Like most parishes we keep it lit as long as possible when the church doors are open so as to give the illusion of it being continually lit.).

And, yes, as you can tell, the Paschal Candle is a comfort and reminder to me of his presence and his ever living for us.

But then during or immediately after the Gospel on Ascension Day, in which Jesus is “parted from” the disciples, the Candle is extinguished.  This year I did that, too.  (Note that we do not keep it lit until Pentecost.)

And it is bittersweet indeed.  I found myself both joyful but quite subdued during Holy Communion last night.  I guess it is one of those Anglican things – he’s with us, but he’s not with us. 

And we, his church, do miss him.

Pope Benedict’s Easter Vigil Homily . . . and BEES!

On this Easter Monday, I commend to you Pope Benedict’s Easter Vigil homily.

I am impressed by his using the vigil liturgy to preach. His use of the Paschal Candle is particularly insightful:

On Easter night, the night of the new creation, the Church presents the mystery of light using a unique and very humble symbol: the Paschal candle. This is a light that lives from sacrifice. The candle shines inasmuch as it is burnt up. It gives light, inasmuch as it gives itself. Thus the Church presents most beautifully the paschal mystery of Christ, who gives himself and so bestows the great light.

That had not occurred to me. I appreciate Pope Benedict for his passion for the liturgy. And that passion clearly is not just for ceremony and the right words but for using it to teach the people, including me.

But what most excites me about his homily is a matter of great import – he mentioned the BEES of the Exsultet, not once, but twice!

The great hymn of the Exsultet, which the deacon sings at the beginning of the Easter liturgy, points us quite gently towards a further aspect. It reminds us that this object, the candle, has its origin in the work of bees. So the whole of creation plays its part. In the candle, creation becomes a bearer of light. But in the mind of the Fathers, the candle also in some sense contains a silent reference to the Church,. The cooperation of the living community of believers in the Church in some way resembles the activity of bees.

Thanks BEE to God for Pope Benedict!

Schori’s Easter Message sans Jesus

Presiding “Bishop” Schori’s Easter Message is out . . . if one can call it an Easter message.

There is much mention of, you guessed it, the UN Millennium Development Goals.

But there is not a single mention of Jesus.

I did not know Jesus is the one who must not be named.

As Peter Ould points out, Schori’s Easter is an “Easter without Jesus.”

What can one say about such a “church” and such a “bishop” except . . .

Anathema.

Bees are Back!

Bees have been restored to their rightful place in the new Roman Catholic English translation of the Exsultet, which is chanted before the Paschal Candle near the beginning of the Easter Vigil. The restored excerpt:

On this, your night of grace, O holy Father,
accept this candle, a solemn offering,
the work of bees and of your servants’ hands,
an evening sacrifice of praise, this gift from your most holy Church.But now we know the praises of this pillar,
which glowing fire ignites for God’s honour,
a fire into many flames divided,
yet never dimmed by sharing of its light,
for it is fed by melting wax,
drawn out by mother bees to build a torch so precious.

I join First Things and the New Liturgical Movement in rejoicing.

Abomination of the Week

This sacrilege may so offend my more liturgically sensitive readers that I hesitate to post it. I will refrain from posting the photos here, but BE WARNED that the photos are at the links below.

*takes a breath*
During the Easter liturgy at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, Memphis, a Canon vested in a . . . feather boa.

I. am. not. kidding. And I have verified that this abomination was actually worn during the liturgy.

----

With thanks (I think) to Bad Vestments.

The Gospel for Easter Tuesday and Scripture

The Gospel Lesson for Easter Tuesday from Luke 24:36-48 gives great insight into the priorities of Christ. Here Luke writes of the first appearance of the risen Christ to the Eleven. After Jesus patiently lets the disciples know it was really him and calms them down a bit, what does he then do?

And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures . . .
Luke 24: 44-45 KJV

Since Jesus himself was and is “The Word,” it is remarkable that the first thing the risen Christ teaches the disciples is . . . scripture, the written word.

One would think the very presence of the risen Christ, the living Word, was enough. Yet Jesus saw fit right away to teach the disciples from the scriptures.

And even before that, on the road to Emmaus, Jesus spent an afternoon teaching two crestfallen followers from the scriptures, as Luke wrote in 24:13-35, the Gospel for Easter Monday. Remember the risen Christ only spent 40 days on this earth before the Ascension. Yet he clearly spent a lot of that time teaching scripture!

If Jesus put so high a priority on scripture and on the teaching and learning of it, then we are surely inconsistent (at the very least!) if we claim Jesus as Lord, but then either neglect scripture or downplay its authority. The clear priorities of the risen Christ himself give no room to those who say things like “We don’t believe the Bible; we believe the Christ behind the Bible.” Nor does it allow the hubris that we know enough scripture already and have no need to be digging into it much anymore, or just do not have the time.

No, if we really believe in the risen Christ and follow him, we will not only believe the Bible, but will be diligently studying it.

“The Light of Christ!”

One of the several reasons I became Anglican is that Anglican worship is more participatory. Well, this Easter, did I get to participate!

For the Easter Vigil, I got to carry the Paschal Candle in, chanting “The Light of Christ” at the three stations in the sanctuary. I’ve wanted to do that for at least a year or two. And I chant quite well if I may say so myself. I also read two of the lessons. (I’m not a deacon, but was vested as a cantor . . . for those who wonder about such things.)

The beginning of the procession was comical, however. There was a breeze, even in the church courtyard were we lit the New Fire. So we lit the Paschal Candle from it with some difficulty. Then, as I was carefully walking the candle to the door a persistent gust blew it out. We returned to the New Fire. But it was already an ex-fire. So the rector simply used his lighter to relight the candle. The congregation was amused.

There was more improvisation on Easter morning as a key pool of acolyte kids were late. I volunteered at the last minute and was the crucifer. So much for showing off my rarely seen Easter suit and sitting comfortably in the pew, but I enjoyed worshipping in the middle of such a glorious service.