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March 26, 2005
Holy Saturday
The Easter rollercoaster is now well underway; with Maundy Thursday and Good Friday behind us, we now spend today cleaning and preparing our churches to receive the risen Christ on Easter Day. Traditionally this is the day on which the Church gets its full annual "Spring Cleaning" and, particularly at places like the Abbey, those hard to reach and very high up canopies, clerestories, and galleries are cleaned, the floors sealed, and everything dusted and polished. The Flower Guild has been out buying truckloads of cut flowers, especially lilies, and will be in the Abbey from an early hour to arrange and set displays in the Sanctuary, the Choir Presbytery, at the Font, and in particular around our Garden Tomb in the Chapel of the Holy Cross.
Tonight, we will light the Easter Fire outside the West Door of the Abbey and carry a lighted taper into the church with which to light the great Paschal Candle which will burn for the next forty days. As this is carried into the church to its place beside the pulpit, other candles will be lit from it. First the two Acolytes' Torches, and the President's candles, then those of the other sacred ministers and the choristers, then all the congregation's. Finally, during the singing of the "Exultate", the great taper candles on the high altar and the candles on all our Chapel Altars and the font will be lit.
After this, the water of the font will be blessed and the congregation will renew their baptismal vows and newly baptised members of the congregation will be welcomed into our "family" in Christ. It was normal in the medieval period for all baptisms to take place on this night and only in extremis at any other time. Here at the Abbey we have re-introduced the tradition of baptising at least one new member on this day and welcoming as many others as may have been baptised during the preceding year while renewing our own Baptismal promises.
Yesterday I mentioned that the Council of Nicea, under the direction of Constantine, had set this time for this celebration; today it may be appropriate to look at why they chose this time. Firstly, it was a choice driven by the fact that the Spring Solstice Festival most closely reflected what Easter is really all about - renewal of life in Christ Jesus. Secondly, as people already celebrated the renewal of life in agriculture and the ending of the long dark winter, it made sense to simply convert the existing festival to this purpose - explaining that the renewal time was a deeper, and, perhaps in an age of short and brutal lives, more important reason to celebrate.
It is certain that Constantine had a number of not so popular or nice ulterior motives for adopting and promoting Christianity - not least its being, so he was told, the only religion whose God found no sin too great to forgive! Secondly, he saw it as a means to control an unruly and very disparate empire, and this is where the abuses crept in. For, when he conferred upon the Bishop's secular authority many more had to be found - and many of those he appointed (and this practice continued under Justinian II) were recently (and often politically expediently!) converted Magistrates and Magnates who retained their original positions, but brought with them much of the Pagan system. This did not do the Church any favours and the next three hundred years seem to have been spent in sortinmg out one heresy after another. Even our image of Christ came into being at this time - a copy of the great statue of Zeus at Mount Olympus! Something that shows just how much of the Hellenic philosophy had been grafted into the Christian message by this time.
The modern Church is very different from that of Constantine, Theodosia, and Justinian II, or the high Medieval period. A great deal of scholastic study in the last 200 years has done much to recover the original understanding and the original intent of the Gospel message and the Gospel story. In the process many of the accretions which came with the adoption of the "official" line have slowly been peeled away and a refreshed, revived, and renewed church is emergeing. Of course there are those who wish to cling to comfortable images and even more comfortable traditions and practices, but they, too, are having to come to terms with the fact that true faith is not vested in structures or images, but in understanding what they believe and why. This is why it is so easy for the theologically challenged media to mock and pour scorn on anything the Bishops try to debate - the press simply digs up something from fifty, sixty, or a hundred years ago and accuses the church of abandoning its principles. If they understood the origins of those principles and the reasons for the shift a little better they might be able to contribute more intelligence to the debate and a little less nonsense.
Interestingly, the re-examination of the Gospels does serve to confirm the events and the faith in ways that a hundred years ago would have been rejected as too "radical". Equally strangely it is often the little windows into the personal that confirms things, rather than the familiar broad sweep of the central story. Mark's youth running away naked, John's account of Peter arguing with Christ about having his feet washed, Matthew hiding in a tree, and Simon of Cyrene's sons being members of the congregation that Mark wrote his Gospel for. Equally, the Pauline letters, Luke's carefully researched Gospel, and Acts all give little gems of truth which confirm and re-inforce the story. Mary's central position is one of the more interesting aspects, as you will find that she appears in the Gospels and the Acts more frequently than any other disciple - and recently a closer look at the original accounts of the Annunciation story in the original language suggests that she should be regarded as the first disciple. She had a choice, and she chose to bear Him and to follow Him to the Cross and resurrection.
So, tonight, we at the Abbey, will celebrate, with a newly kndled fire, the night on which He left the tomb, and welcome and celebrate His presence among us with light, music, and the celebration of the First Mass of Easter. We will join the women at the empty tomb and wonder at the miracle, we will rejoice with Mary Magdalene that He is alive, ascended, and with us yet.
Easter is come - Christ is with us.
The rollercoaster is approaching its apogee - prepare for an exciting ride!
Posted by The Gray Monk at March 26, 2005 09:16 AM