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DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20260805
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DTSTAMP:20260802T111409Z
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SUMMARY:Vigils Reading
DESCRIPTION:A reading from \nHANS URS VON BALTHASAR \n◊◊◊ \nThe Church lives in an incomprehensible place between earth and \nheaven\, between death and eternal life\, between the old world that is passing \naway and the new and incorruptible world. The Christian has died with Christ in \nbaptism but has also (as St Paul assures him) risen up with Christ and ascended \nwith him into heaven\, and he lives in time on the basis of eternal life and \noriented toward eternal life. As he follows Christ\, he goes toward suffering and \ndeath\, and yet he lives out of the real power of the risen Christ. \nThus Christian existence embraces the span between penitence and \nfeast. We are reminded of this by the Church year with its seasons of Advent and \nLent and yet with its unbroken succession of feasts great and small. This \nsequence gives us a symbol of something that\, on a deeper level\, is a mutual \ncompenetration\, a third paradox of our Christian existence. But just as heaven is \nvictorious over earth\, and resurrection over death\, so for the Christian must \neven penitence\, suffering\, and death be lived out of a disposition of the \ncelebration of a feast: the feast of the wedding of God with his redeemed world. \nIt is well known that the solemnities of the Old Testament all grew out of \nthanksgiving feasts for harvest. Where the earth bears fruit and holds feast\, man \nholds a feast with it in thankfulness… Everywhere the joy at harvest shimmers \nthrough the Mazzoth feast of unleavened bread\, the Pentecost feast of the \nfirstfruits of the wheat harvest\, and the feast of booths in the plucking of fruit \nand grapes\, when people slept in booths in the open fields and beside the \nvineyard: and perhaps no one even today can celebrate a religious feast with \nsuch a natural joy and cheerfulness as the Jews. \nThere are prayers\, but there are also songs and dances as a means of \ngiving thanks to God. Has this cheerfulness remained anywhere on the faces of \nthe Christians who celebrate a feast? It is true that the mystery that they \ncelebrate lies on a deeper level – but is it not also greater? Ought not the joy too \nbe a much deeper joy? What are religious harvest thanksgiving festivals\, even \nindeed when they are concerned with the rescuing of Israel\, compared with the \nunforeseeable harvest of bread and wine in the New and eternal Covenant? The \nwhole earth is now bread and wine. Must not the genuinely human joy be \npermitted to break through at this point? Would not a song by thousands of \nvoices…be the expression of what the Apostle says: “Rejoice in the Lord always; \nagain I say rejoice…” \nIt is not a worldly enthusiasm that we are to draw forth from the feast but \na strength that comes from the insight into the essence of God’s love. And it is \nnot herself that the Church celebrates; she is not enthusiastic about herself but \nonly about her Head and Lord. It is not the emotional atmosphere that is \nimportant but the matter itself. And this is God\, who becomes man among us in \norder to die for us… \nThe object of our celebration is Jesus Christ in his love that goes until the \nend\, in his power to lay down his life and to take it up again\, in his creative might \nto make the gift of himself to us in the forms of bread and wine\, in order to be \ninconceivably one with humanity.
URL:https://laycisterciansofgethsemani.org/event/vigils-reading-455/
CATEGORIES:Vigils Readings
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