Through Lent and culminating today on Easter, the Emerging Scholars Network has shared collects from The Book of Common Prayer and prayer requests from Emerging Scholars*. Scholar’s Compass has continued, but with posts on weekdays instead of Sundays.
[Read more…] about Easter Sunday (Prayer)
easter
Easter
At the Lamb’s High Feast We Sing
At the Lamb’s high feast we sing
Praise to our victorious King,
Who hath washed us in the tide
Flowing from His piercèd Side;
Praise we Him, whose love divine,
Gives His sacred Blood for wine,
Gives His Body for the feast,
Christ the Victim, Christ the Priest.Where the Paschal blood is poured,
Death’s dark angel sheathes his sword
Israel’s hosts triumphant go
Through the wave that drowns the foe.
Praise we Christ, Whose Blood was shed,
Paschal Victim, Paschal Bread;
With sincerity and love
Eat we manna from above.Mighty Victim from the sky!
Hell’s fierce powers beneath Thee lie;
Thou hast conquer’d in the fight,
Thou hast brought us life and light:
Now no more can death appall,
Now no more the grave enthrall;
Thou hast opened Paradise,
And in Thee Thy saints shall rise.
– Latin, fourth century, translated by Robert Campbell, courtesy of Hymnary.org, http://www.hymnary.org/text/at_the_lambs_high_feast_we_sing
Image: He, Qi. The Risen Christ Appears, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=46115 [retrieved April 4, 2015]. Original source: heqigallery.com.
Scholar’s Compass: Lent and Easter’s Timing
The time when Easter is ordained to take place is, like the Paschal celebrations as a whole, redolent with sacred mystery. In the first place, we are careful to wait until after the equinox to celebrate the Lord’s Passover . . . so that the feast-day on which the Mediator between God and man, having destroyed the power of darkness, opened the way of light for the world, might show its inner [significance] by means of the order of time. — Bede, 0 (trans. Faith Wallis)
Reflection
It was a revelation to one of my Jewish students when she realized that the holidays she cherished tied the rhythms of her life throughout the year to the agricultural and social cycles of ancient Israel. What had begun as a term paper about the Jewish calendar had become an intellectual journey that transformed these days from mere dates in the Gregorian calendar into moments of meaning connected to her heritage. [Read more…] about Scholar’s Compass: Lent and Easter’s Timing
DEATH be not proud, though . . .
Death and Resurrection
He was a young man, and I could see fear in his eyes as he gripped the railings of the bed and struggled to breathe, sucking in heavily through the plastic mask feeding him oxygen. His body was wasting away from cancer, and the infections that had crept into his lungs were now forcing every compensatory mechanism into extremis. He wanted to fight and live, but there was little left for the ICU to offer. I had been pleading with him for days to consider hospice and a more peaceable passing at home where he could be surrounded by family and friends, but to him that meant giving up.
So we had continued to do everything, and as predicted we eventually came to that point where every biomarker and technological parameter heralded physiologic disaster. “Your breathing cannot hold on its own. We will need to intubate you soon, but your body is so sick that we will probably never be able to take the breathing tube out.” I paused. We had had this conversation before. “Do you still want us to do it? I need to tell you the truth; you will almost certainly die either way. If we transition you to hospice, you can go home and pass away with your family and friends, and we will make sure that you are comfortable. But if you still want us to do everything – intubation, CPR, shocks – you will still die, but it will be here in this hospital, and it will be brutal. Do you want us to intubate you? Do you want CPR?” He nodded vigorously, still afraid, still adamant.
He was intubated. [Read more…] about Death and Resurrection