Flowers in Lent (mid-week message)

 

Flowers in Lent

Fr. Tony’s Midweek Message

March 9, 2016 

“You are most human when you can take your passion, even your controlling passion, check it in its mid-career, and temper it by its opposite.”  Irving Babbitt, Literature and the American College.

We are having two funerals later this week, one on Friday (2 p.m.) for Charles Leaf, and one on Saturday (2 p.m.) for Eric Bunn.   The funeral rite in the prayer book includes the commendation of the soul to God, which ends in the words “even at the grave my song is alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!”  We say this even in Lent—when alleluias are not allowed— because the burial office is an Easter liturgy.  Funerals do not exist in liturgical time: they have one foot in this world of times and seasons, feasts and fasts, and one foot in the unseen world of continual light, warmth, and the never-ending Messianic banquet.  That’s why we bring out the Paschal candle for funerals, even in Advent and Lent.  That’s why we have flowers at funerals even in Lent.   

It is an important reminder.  Lent has its limits.  Penitence has its limits.  Faith and religion have their limits.   If you are following a Lenten fast, remember that Sundays are not counted among the forty days, and often people relax their Lenten disciplines on Sunday, which, after all, is a feast of the resurrection. 

Jesus taught that our religious faith should always be tempered by compassion for our fellow human beings.  “The first commandment may be to love God with all your heart,” he said, “but the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves is every bit as important as that.”  “The Sabbath was made for us, not us for the Sabbath.”  “When all is said and done, what will divide the sheep from the goats on the last day is whether we cared for others.” 

Today is the feast day of Gregory of Nyssa, one of the Cappadocian fathers who gave us the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.  In one of his doctrinal tractates, he writes:  “Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees.”  

Worship must always be rooted in wonder and awe.  Otherwise, it becomes easily corrupted.  Tempering worship and faith with compassion and care for others keeps worship honest, and us human. 

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Tony+