That to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is really your God. Martin Luther The drama of Thursday into early Friday of Holy Week is both familiar and inescapable. The Last Supper. The Garden of Gethsemane. Judas’ betrayal. Peter’s denial. All inexorably leading to trial, conviction, and crucifixion. The elements of the story are so familiar to Christians and others that it is tempting to suppose that there are no more fresh takes or new perspectives to consider on... Read more
For those unfamiliar with the liturgical calendar, the Sunday and feast day assigned readings rotate through a three-year cycle, each yearly cycle beginning with the first Sunday of Advent. This year the Holy Week gospel texts are from John which, to be honest, doesn’t make me happy. Some people claim to love John’s gospel the most, but I’m not one of them. The Jesus of the Gospel of John loves to pontificate and sounds a lot more like a theologian... Read more
Today is Palm Sunday, one of the most dramatic days on the liturgical calendar. But there is one reported event attributed to Palm Sunday that makes an appearance in the liturgy every Sunday. And each time I say or sing this part of the liturgy, I remember a beloved colleague. Rodney Delasanta was one of best teachers and colleagues I ever had the privilege of knowing. Rodney was a true Renaissance man—a Chaucer scholar, family man, sports fan (especially the... Read more
What we call doubt is often simply dullness of mind and spirit, not the absence of faith at all, but faith latent in the lives we are not quite living, God dormant in the world to which we are not quite giving our best selves. Christopher Wiman I have noticed over the past several months that my Keurig coffee tastes have changed. In the past I have always considered Starbucks coffee to be unpalatably strong, opting instead–as a good New... Read more
I was in church for the first time in a month or so recently and noticed a couple of seemingly minor but very important changes that have been made in very familiar liturgical texts by the new priest-in-charge who has been in place for just a few months. For instance, the Lord’s Prayer: Praise God from whom all blessings flow, Praise Him God all creatures here below, Praise Him God above ye heavenly hosts, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.... Read more
In a podcast I was listening to while walking Bovina a few days ago, a New Testament scholar and theology professor from somewhere said that there is no report in the gospels of Jesus ever encountering a dead person without raising her or him from the dead. The theologian speculated that this means that death is not a good thing (duh). If his claim about the gospel accounts is true (I haven’t fact-checked this yet), it could simply be that... Read more
“Redeem the time,” Paul says in his letter to the church at Philippi, “because the days are evil.” As a youngster I wondered why time needed redeeming and what it needed redeeming from—I still wonder that as a sixty-something. As a person for whom time seems to pass more quickly every day, let alone every year, it’s worth taking a look at the nature of time and why it might need to be saved or redeemed. It brings me back... Read more
In December of 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a Christmas letter to a number of his friends, relatives, and colleagues—people with whom he had been involved for the previous decade in various escalating behind-the-scenes and increasingly dangerous attempts to undermine the rule of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party. This letter has come to be known as “Ten Years After.” As his fellow conspirators waited to see if the latest of numerous attempts to assassinate the Fuhrer would finally be successful,... Read more
Most everyone is familiar with the opening lines of Genesis, where we are told that “In the beginning . . . the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep.” Then God says, “Let there be light!” and creation gets rolling. It’s not at all difficult to conclude that, from the very start, God prefers light to darkness; a multitude of passages from scripture to come bear this out. This seminal account of... Read more
Tomorrow is a big day for Providence College sports fans. Our men’s hockey team will unexpectedly be playing in their league’s semifinals against Boston University at 4:00, then our men’s basketball team will play in its first round NCAA tournament game against Kentucky at 7:00. Must see viewing. Oh, and tomorrow is also St. Patrick’s Day, to which I say: Meh. A few years ago, I had a brief locker room conversation with a campus security guard who frequently tortures... Read more
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