I KNOW IT'S STILL EASTER, BUT...

GLOBAL FACTS ABOUT SEX


AT ANY GIVEN MOMENT:


FACT:

79,000,000 people are engaged in sex - right now.


FACT:

58,000,000 are kissing.


FACT:

37,000,000 are relaxing after having sex.


FACT:

1 odd person is reading this blog.


YOU HANG IN THERE SUNSHINE......


Doug strikes again!

CHRIST IS RISEN! ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA!

 

GRECO, El - "The Resurrection" - 1577-79
Church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo, Toledo

EASTER COLLECT

Almighty God,
through your Son Jesus Christ
You overcame death and opened to us
the gate of everlasting life;
grant us so to die daily to sin,
that we may evermore live with him
in the joy of his resurrection:
who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God now and for ever.
Amen.

(New Zealand Prayer Book, p.593)

Painting from the Web Gallery of Art.

HAPPY EASTER!

 

 

 

From Doug and me to all of you.

TENEBRAE RESPONSORIES

 

MadPriest at Of Course, I Could Be Wrong posted a Hipcast of a lovely version of the Holy Saturday Victoria: Tenebrae Responsories. You may want to have a listen. I liked the music so that I bought the album from eMusic.

CHRIST IN THE TOMB

 

HOLBEIN, Hans the Younger - "The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb" - Kunstmuseum, Öffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basle

Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before him no creature is hidden, but all are naked and laid bare to the eyes of the one to whom we must render an account.

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. 16Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

Hebrews 4:12-16

Not a pretty picture, is it? Click on the painting for the enlargedment. The painting shocked me upon first view, but it seems a realistic portrayal of a decaying body.

Note on the painting from the Web Gallery of Art:

Portraits apart, this is perhaps Holbein's most striking image. Since Dostoevsky's observations in the nineteenth century, which dwelt on the forbidding aspects of physical decay and bodily corruption, the painting has been seen as the product of a mind steeped in the apocalyptic horrors that were unleashed by the first phase of the Reformation. But what is known of Holbein's phlegmatic interpretation of the human condition belies this interpretation. Modern authorities suggest that Holbein intended to stress the sheer miracle of Resurrection and its imminence, since the minutely-observed level of decay in the gangrenous wounds suggests that we see Christ's body three days after death.

An inscription in brush on paper, 'IESUS NAZARENUS REX IUDAEORUM', borne above the painting by angels holding the instruments of the Passion, precludes its use as a predella panel (at the base of an altarpiece), as does our viewpoint of the body. Instead, a role as an object of contemplation, a reminder of Christ's sufferings and mortification and his subsequent triumph, is suggested. Such practices flourished from the late middle ages and account in part for the many representations of the dead Christ from Lombardy (the Bellinis in Venice also produced several). Mantegna's famous version grapples with artistic as well as religious problems in its dramatic foreshortening, which are not fully resolved. By contrast, Holbein's draughtsmanship appears masterly.

An unverified tradition asserts that a drowned body fished out of the Rhine served the painter as a model for the figure of Christ lying in the tomb. Even if it is not true, the legend is a telling testament to the terrifying realism of Holbein's depiction of a corpse in a state of rigor mortis.

NO BLESSING FOR YOU

Ruth Gledhill in the Times:

Like a Druidic emissary from Tuatha Dé Danaan, the mythic inhabitants of Ireland, the Archbishop of Canterbury will lob a spiritual depth charge at Pope Benedict XVI on Monday when he damns the Catholic Church in Ireland as having lost all credibility.

Dr Williams also reveals on the BBC Radio 4 programme Start the Week that he is withholding his blessing from Anglicans who choose to take advantage of the Pope’s offer of a special home in the Catholic Church for disaffected Anglicans. “God bless them. I don’t,” he says, witheringly.

Ruth also comments on Fr Cantalamessa's sermon at the Good Friday service which the pope attended on Good Friday.

His [Dr Williams] difficulties are as nothing compared with the child abuse tsunami that threatens to drown Roman Catholicism. Yesterday it got a whole lot worse for the Roman Catholic Church when the Pope’s personal preacher, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, likened accusations against the Pope and the Church in the sex abuse scandal to the “collective violence suffered by the Jews”.

H/T to Марко at Amictus Sindone for the link to the Times.

UPPING THE ANTE

From the New York Times:

A senior Vatican priest speaking at a Good Friday service compared the uproar over sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church — which have included reports about Pope Benedict XVI’s oversight role in two cases — to the persecution of the Jews, sharply raising the volume in the Vatican’s counterattack.
....

Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews. “They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.
....

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi stressed that Father Cantalamessa’s sermon represented his own private thoughts and was not “an official statement” from the Vatican.

Posted without commentary.

MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?

 

Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) 1954, by Salvador Dali

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.
....

Yet it was you who took me from the womb;
you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
On you I was cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me you have been my God.
Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

(Psalm 22:1-2, 9-11)

In a wonderful essay at the Daily Episcopalian, Christopher Evans reminds us to connect the Incarnation (which is more than a pretty story!) to the Crucifixion. My heart leaped as I read, because I find that connection somewhat lacking in the present day liturgies. When Joseph and Mary took Jesus to the temple in Jerusalem for the purification ceremony, old Simeon had a word or two to say:

And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

(Luke 2:33-35)

In his essay, Evans says:

In working to correct an imbalance, it seems that now we want little to do with a pained and suffering God; with a God who nurses, shits, and bleeds; with a God who identifies with flesh, blood, and bone definitively. The Nativity, the Incarnation, is reduced to sweet manger scenes and gifts of sweets. The cross is an after thought to the joys of Easter. We want nothing of the Creator who, in J.S. Bach’s words for St. John’s Passion, dies.

But without this bodiliness, this fleshliness, the Resurrection becomes a ghostly thing.

That God came down, that God took upon God's own self the human form to become one of us, to live as we live, to struggle as we struggle, to love and take joy in human companionship, and, finally, to suffer and die, and to be raised up, flesh and blood, is the miracle of Christmas, and the miracle of Easter, and the miracle of our salvation.

As Evans says:

It is this fleshly God, Jesus Christ, who goes all the way for us that captures my heart and imagination, that makes utterly awesome the Resurrection, the Ascension, the Communion of Saints, the Creation, the Holy Communion.

Amen!

"MY EPISCOPAL CHURCH"

Title and video "borrowed" from Ann at What the Tide Brings In.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - GOOD WILL

Good will that is purchased is worth nothing at all.