“I saw a new Jerusalem, the holy city, coming down out of heaven from God.”
“God’s city: that image has long gathered to itself massive human hopes. Would that there were a city, with all the intensity and vigor of the great cities that have centered human life and attracted human imagination and made order out of the human experience of geography, but now whole, sheltering and welcoming all, healing, luminous with God’s presence, with the Spirit of God.
Such a city would be where God dwells.
Well, say Augustine and Luther and much of the Christian tradition, to taste the meal is already to find oneself entering into the city. The exchange of the meal—we bring wretchedness and are given blessedness—is the commerce of the city.
But is it for us?Come to the table. The gift of the meal is the word of Christ—“My body, my blood for you”—which may be kept, kept in the heart, held, the risen one still speaking there. Those who receive it become the very dwelling place of God. Where God dwells there is the city.
Eat and drink. In the visible word which is the bread and cup, you are gathered with all the redeemed little ones into the city of the Lamb.”
-Gordon Lathrop
“For fifty days after Easter it is granted to us to live in the paschal joy, to experience time as the feast. And then comes the “last and great” day of Pentecost and with it our return into the real time of this world. At Vespers of that day the Christians are ordered—for the first time since Easter—to kneel. The night is approaching, the night of time and history, of the daily effort, of the fatigue and temptations, of the whole inescapable burden of life.”
-Alexander Schmemann
Christ our Passover Pascha nostrum
“Alleluia.
Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us;
therefore let us keep the feast,
Not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Alleluia.
Christ being raised from the dead will never die again;
death no longer has dominion over him.
The death that he died, he died to sin, once for all;
but the life he lives, he lives to God.
So also consider yourselves dead to sin,
and alive to God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Alleluia.
Christ has been raised from the dead,
the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since by a man came death,
by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die,
so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Alleluia.”
-1 Corinthians 5:7-8; Romans 6: 9-11; 1 Corinthians 15:20-22;
The Book of Common Prayer, page 83
| permalink
Back Next
Calendar
