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We are not here to celebrate Christmas. We are here to celebrate Christ.

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Altar-at-Christmas---2012Sermon for Christmas Eve 2014

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, amen.

If you ever happen to be passing through Queen’s college at Oxford University at Christmas time, you may encounter a very strange custom. In that college there is a tradition of having a very special feast at Christmas. The feast begins with torchbearers entering the dining hall, accompanied by a herald who sings a once famous Christmas Carol, and the chef who bears in his hands the evening’s piece-de-resistance: a boar’s head.

The carol that the herald sings, and in which the guests join in singing, is known as the boar’s head carol. It is quite old, and was once quite popular, just as the boar’s head feast was quite popular and held in many places throughout England. But I am willing to guess, that unless you are someone who studies obscure traditions, or unless you are from one of the few places where this tradition is maintained, you have probably never heard of this carol.

You aren’t going to hear it on the radio, or in the stores, and it isn’t likely to be found on any new recordings of Christmas music. If you manage to look it up, or if you actually find an old recording of it these are the lyrics you will find:

The Boar’s head in hand bear I,

Bedecked with bays and rosemary;

And I pray you, my masters, be merry,
         

Quot estis in convivio.

 

Caput apri defero.

Reddens laudes Domino.

 

The boar’s head, as I understand,

Is the bravest dish in all the land;

When thus bedecked with a gay garland,

Let us servire cantico.

Our steward hath provided this,

In honour of the King of Bliss;

Which on this day to be served is 
        

  In Reginensi Atrio.

 

You may be wondering to yourself: what on earth does that carol have to do with Christmas? and you should be. The tradition that it describes and celebrates is something very foreign to most of us: unless you go to a luau in Hawaii, or a pig-picking down South, you probably are not accustomed to eating an animals head, much less of associating that with Christmas, and yet, for Christians centuries ago, this type of feast was as much a part of their idea of Christmas, as shopping for presents is for us today. They would have recognized this song as a Christmas Carol, because its lyrics celebrated part of their Christmas celebration.

For most of us now this song is merely a curiosity. It has died as a popular carol, and the reason it has died is not because it is old. There are plenty of even older carols that are still sung today: No, the reason it has died is because it no longer has any meaning to us. The song celebrates a tradition: it celebrates the Christmas Feast and the food and the decorations; it celebrates the customs of Christmas, but what barely gets mentioned, in one momentary allusion at the end of the song, is the reason why the feast is being celebrated: in honor of the King of Bliss. The song’s primary purpose is to praise the celebration of Christmas, not the birth of Christ, but because our manner of celebrating has changed so much, it is hard for us to connect with, or to get much meaning from.

I began reflecting on this carol this year as I was doing my Christmas shopping, and like many of you was inundated by the constant blaring of holiday music in the stores and on the radio. As I was listening these songs, it occurred to me that our holiday music has become more and more about celebrating Christmas the season or Christmas the holiday, and less and less about celebrating Christ the man. Like the Boar’s head carol, so many of these songs celebrate customs or traditions that are meaningful to us in our own age, but I wonder how many of them will be meaningful 100 or 200 years from now. Will future generations, generations whose customs may be far different from our own, will they look back on our holiday music and wonder: “What on earth were they singing about?”

Customs and traditions come and go. The world we all live in changes everyday. The way we celebrate Christmas changes too, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Personally I would love to go to a boar’s head feast, but I am willing to guess that many of you would be less enthusiastic. Many of the traditions that are dear to us as a part of Christmas now, were really only begun within the last 150 years or so, and we can only imagine what Christmas may be like for our grandchildren, or their grandchildren. In every age, the way we celebrate Christmas changes, but the story of Christ does not. We think of secular Christmas music as being a modern phenomenon, it is not. The word secular just means “of the age,” it doesn’t mean the music is bad, it can be quite fun, what it means is that the music belongs to a certain place and time, and when the age has passed, much of the music does too. The Boars head carol and the boars head feast belong to a certain place and time, and now that that time has passed, those traditions have little relevance to our lives.

There is an expression that is used over and over again in the latin mass: in saecula saeculorum. It comes from the same root word that our word secular (or age) comes from and it means “in the age of all ages”. The phrase is used over and over again as the ending to our important prayers: we usually translate it as “forever and ever” or “throughout all ages.” It is a reminder to us that the story we are telling here, not just tonight but at every mass, it is a reminder that this story is not just about our own age, or about something that happened long long ago: It is a story that is about and concerns all ages. There is a reason why songs like the Boar’s Head carol have mostly passed away, and other songs like Adeste Fideles or Of the Father’s love begotten have remained popular. One song celebrates Christmas, the other songs celebrate Christ. One type of song has meaning in one age or era, the other type has meaning throughout all ages.

Tonight we are not here to celebrate Christmas, we are here to celebrate Christ. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t participate in the holiday celebrations that are secular or “of the age,” what it does mean is that we should never lose sight of exactly what it is that we are celebrating. In the prayer book we pray that we “may so pass through things temporal, that we finally lose not the things eternal.” After the food has gone cold, the company has outworn their welcome, the gifts have been opened and the garland has dried and wilted, what will we have left of Christmas? We will have the one thing that doesn’t just belong to this age, but belongs to all ages. We will still have Christ, and he is after all, the only part of Christmas that we ever needed in the first place.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.

There is Only One War: Sermon for Remembrance Day November 9th, 2014

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remembrance sunday

Sermon for Remembrance Day, November 9th, 2014

Click link below to see the editorial cartoon referenced in this sermon

Bruce MacKinnon Editorial Cartoon

A couple weeks ago a Canadian newspaper, the Chronicle Herald, published an editorial cartoon that many have described as one of the most powerful and moving cartoons ever published. The drawing, by an artist named Bruce Mackinnon, depicts bronze soldiers stepping down from their stone war memorial platform to hold up a fallen comrade. The cartoon was published as a tribute to Corporal Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian soldier who was killed during the terrorist attack on the Canadian parliament.

While on the surface this drawing is a heartbreaking depiction of the camaraderie that exists between members of the armed services, a bond that transcends death, there is in this depiction of that terrible tragedy on October 22nd, a deeper lesson for all of us. Today is Remembrance Sunday, and as 2014 is the 100th anniversary of the beginning of hostilities of the First World War, there will be services and commemorations happening at war memorials throughout the world, memorials just like the one Corporal Cirillo was standing beside.

We will remember today the 5-6 million allied soldiers killed in the First World War, the more than a million allied soldiers killed in the Second World War, as well the many soldiers killed in conflicts since then: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. We name conflicts after the country they happen in now and I think in our minds we think of war as something that happens between countries. It is us and them: Allied powers verses Central powers, Allied powers verses Axis powers, the United States verses Japan or Great Britain verses Argentina. The truth is, as what happened last month in Canada was a painful reminder, war isn’t so simple anymore. Perhaps it never really was.

The young corporal who was killed while on duty at that war memorial was not killed by an enemy combatant; he wasn’t killed by a foreign government or even a foreign person. He wasn’t at war with the man who killed him…not in any traditional sense. It was someone from his own country. It was someone that he had been willing to defend. This isn’t war as we like to think of it. There weren’t any negotiations or declarations and (although he was given a very dignified funeral) Corporal Cirillo’s name probably won’t wind up listed as a casualty of any specific conflict, and yet part of what makes that picture so moving is that we all know deep down that he deserves to be there on that monument just as much as those bronze soldiers do; his sacrifice is worthy to be remembered just as theirs is.

I think it is important to remember on days like today when we commemorate the many heroes of major world conflicts and on days like last October 22nd when we witness the senseless death of a lone soldier just doing his duty, it is important to remember on those days that there is really only one war.

There is only one war and we all have a roll to play in it. It is not the war against terror, or the world war, or the cold war. It is much older than all of those. It is a war that we have all been fighting since the dawn of humanity. It is, quite simply, the war between good and evil. The brave men and women who we honor today weren’t just soldiers in her majesty’s army, of the United States of America, or the Allied Expeditionary Force: they were soldiers in the one great battle and the one great war.

The war between good and evil isn’t a war between nations as we are sometimes painfully reminded. It is a war between wills. It is a war between the graces given to us by God: mercy, courage, compassion and our own sinful desires to be covetous, fearful and hurtful. It is a war between our noble desires to defend, protect and respect and our evil lusts to steal, kill and dominate. God has given us the freedom to choose which path we will follow: we can choose to follow the path of mercy, justice and compassion, showing respect to all and defending the weakest among us, or we can choose to follow the path of fear, hatred and intolerance. Either way, ground zero in the war between good and evil is right here. Right inside our own hearts.

We honor our veterans today and I think that perhaps one of the best ways that we can honor them is by looking at the choices that they had to make. When danger and evil threatened they could have succumbed to it, but instead they chose to stand up to it. On that terrible day last month, one Canadian chose to show honor and respect by defending the lives of his fellow men, another Canadian chose to show fear and hatred by taken the lives of his fellow men. We have those same choices to make every day of our lives. Do we stand up to evil, not just in the world but in ourselves, or do we allow ourselves to become the very thing we have been fighting?

This morning the choir is singing two of my favorite anthems: Jerusalem and I Vow to thee My Country. These songs have been criticized when used in church settings because of their nationalistic overtones. I would say to those critics listen to the words of these songs again. Pay attention to what they are actually saying: I will not cease from mental fight, nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, till we have built Jerusalem in England’s green and pleasant land. The fight is my fight and it starts as a mental one. It starts as a mental fight between good and evil that then calls me to go out into my own country and build God’s kingdom there. This is not blind worship of a country for what it is, it recognizes that within the country itself is a struggle between the countenance of God and those dark Satanic mills; it is instead a call to action to do the work of transforming the country into what God is calling it to be.

I vow to thee my country begins by declaring the love that we have for country and the duty that we have to sacrifice and protect it, but it goes on to talk of another country: God’s kingdom, and it is to that kingdom that we owe our greatest allegiance. We cannot count her armies, we cannot see her king, but her fortress is right here…a faithful heart. And soul by soul that kingdom silently increases. The ways of that kingdom are gentleness, the ways of that kingdom are peace.

When lieutenant colonel John McCrae wrote his famous poem “In Flanders Fields” he ended it with this stanza: “Take up our quarrel with the foe: to you from falling hands we throw the torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die we shall not sleep, though poppies grow in Flanders’ fields.” Who is the foe? It isn’t Germany, or Russia, or Japan or Iraq. The foe is much closer to each of us than any of those places. It is the same foe we have always been fighting: we may call him Satan or the Devil or the evil forces of this world, but it is the same enemy and the battleground is taking place right in each of our hearts. We may know in faith that the war is won and that the victory is ours through our Lord Jesus Christ, but we still have battles to fight each and every day, and we still have sacrifices to make. Let us catch the torch and hold it high, let us keep faith with those who’ve died.

 

Institutions do not exist…Relationships do

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Institutions do not exist.

 

At least, not in the way that they often think that they do. Despite the Supreme Court’s concept of Corporate Personhood that allows corporations to be treated, at times, as if they were individuals, the truth is that institutions and corporations do not exist apart from the individuals that make them up. They can’t make decisions on their own; they can’t eat and breathe on their own; they can’t accomplish anything on their own apart from the individuals that work on their behalf. It is the living and breathing individuals working in relationship with each other that make corporations possible and apart from that, an institution’s existence is tantamount to an idea on paper, nothing more.

 

My reflections on the non-existence of institutions began swirling around in my head a couple weeks ago as the crisis at the General Theological Seminary in New York began to spill into the news. I should be completely clear here that I don’t have the same personal stake in GTS that many of my friends and colleagues do. I attended a different seminary and I don’t have any close affiliation with any of its board or faculty members, so my observation of the current fight between the Board, Dean and Faculty is really as someone who is an outsider to the community. Nonetheless, the tragic war currently going on at this school, seems to be to be emblematic of a larger problem that exists within the church as a whole: its all about trying to save the institution.

 

I have no doubt that both sides in the current conflict at General are primarily concerned with the best interests of the institution, but I would argue that having the interests of the institution at heart might be precisely the problem that has led to this impasse. When we start to love an institution for itself, we are liable to overlook and undervalue the real relationships that make those institutions possible in the first place. We must not see this as just a problem for one seminary in New York City though, but as a problem that the entire Catholic Church of Christ grapples with from time to time and that the Episcopal Church, among others, is struggling with in very specific ways right now.

 

Whenever I hear someone say that they love an institution I often wonder precisely what they mean: Do they love the building? Do they love the people that work there? Is it the tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation that they love? When people say that they love the Episcopal Church, to what specifically are they referring? To the national church headquarters at 815 2nd Ave in New York City? (I doubt it) For me at least, to say that I love the Episcopal Church is a short-hand way of saying that I love the people within the Episcopal Church. It is a way of saying that I love what we as individuals are trying to do when we come together with the common mission of worshipping God and proclaiming the gospel. The church is made up of individuals who come together with a common purpose and a common mission; without individuals coming together and working and living in relationship with each other, the church as an institution or a corporation would simply cease to exist. The institution of the church and its corporate structure exist to support and facilitate those meaningful, purposeful relationships between individuals, but all too often we think of our relationships with our fellow christians as something that is necessary to support the church, and not something that it is necessary for the church to support.

 

When our Lord gave his summary of the law he instructed us to love God and to love our neighbor. Conspicuously absent from that list are any of the human institutions, corporations and associations which we routinely organize ourselves into. And yet, somehow we frequently manage to misdirect our affections away from the people that make up an institution, or the mission it serves, and we start loving the institution as a thing in itself, as if it were a person. Naturally, when something happens that threatens that institution, our first instinct is to try to protect and save it. And we will do anything to save the corporation…even if it means doing something harmful to those that make it up; even if it means sacrificing the original mission for which it was founded, even if it means breaking the relationships that made it possible in the first place.

 

The problem of putting an institution before human relationships begins when we convince ourselves that the institution, itself, matters.

 

Not the people that form the institution. Not the people it serves. Not its mission. The institution itself matters. We must do whatever we can to save the institution. Perhaps it is part of the self-perpetuating tendency of all groups, but spend any time in corporate America and you are bound to hear the argument that the institution must take (fill in the blank) action in order for its existence to continue. Our focus naturally moves away from the mission of the organization and it moves away from the people who collectively form it and run it, and we establish the institution itself as an idol to be worshipped. Although the CEO of General Motors never actually said “What is good for General Motors, is good for America,” still the mentality that what is good for the institution MUST be good for the people has a very firm grip on American corporate culture.

 

This may seem like a mere philosophical argument, but it has some painful real world consequences. In 2002, when the sexual abuse scandal involving the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston erupted in the media, the most damning information, and that for which most people were rightfully outraged, was not the simple fact that a few priests had committed horrible crimes, it was the manner in which the crimes had been perpetuated by the institution’s desire to protect itself from scandal. In short, the institutional church perpetuated a system which harmed its most vulnerable members, purely out of a desire to protect itself from negative publicity. This is, of course, an extreme example of how worshipping the corporation or the institution itself can be devastating and harmful to the relationships of the people within the institution.

 

There are plenty of examples within our own denomination as well. The Episcopal Church always seems to be looking for the newest way to save itself. Whether it is the “Task Force for Reimagining the Episcopal Church” or with the latest legal battle being fought on whatever front, the concern always seems to drift more toward the preservation of the institution than the preservation of the relationships involved. Any institution is only as strong as the relationships between the individuals who make it up. The institution itself is not a real thing, but the relationships are. When the relationships are broken, regardless of who is right or wrong, the institution is going to falter, and perhaps even fail. If we think that we can save an institution without saving the relationships that make it possible, we make a fatal error.

 

Whether it is the Universal Catholic Church, our denomination, our parish or our seminary, any time we make a decision to put the interests of the institution itself ahead of the interests of the people (and real relationships, and mission) that make that institution possible, we take a turn down a dead-end street. Saying that “what is good for the institution is good for the people,” is very tempting, but time and time again this has proven in practice to be just not true. Like any idol, once we have set an institution up as an object to be worshipped and adored, we lay the groundwork for the inevitable fight over who is going to have control over that object. Perhaps this is why our Lord’s instructions in the summary of the law are limited to loving God and loving our neighbors: they are two things that we cannot control. It is much harder to love something that you don’t have control over; you are forced to live in relationship with it.

 

Institutions, themselves, do not exist.

 

What does exist are the relationships we have with each other. Institutions are just fancy logos and ink on paper. The real corporations are all the collected individuals who work side by side, day in and day out in offices and factories, at desks and in laundry rooms with a common mission and purpose of working together to make something happen. The church doesn’t really exist either, not by itself. The institution of the church exists to support our relationship with Christ and our relationships with each other. Having apostolic succession, having ancient rituals, having scriptures and having venerable buildings are ways in which the church helps build those relationships, across time and across place, but lest we make an idol out of the church itself, we must remember that it is those relationships that are of the utmost importance, not the institution. The real church, the Catholic Church of Christ, is each and every believer worshipping side by side, across continents and across generations, loving God, loving each other and sharing the common mission of trying to tell the story of that love to the world. It is the relationships that we form “whenever two or three are gathered” that really matter. It is in those relationships where Christ is alive, and not in any ink on paper.

 

As I stated in the beginning, I did not attend General Seminary. A few weeks ago, one of my classmates from my own seminary sent out a facebook post recalling how we all supported each other on September 11th, 2001, our first week of classes. What a harrowing and awful time that was, and yet I look back now and think what a gift it was to be able to form relationships with so many talented and caring people at such a difficult time. Through all of the turmoil it was the relationships that we had with each other that made our class strong, and not the institution. I chose my seminary because I thought it was the institution that was important; what I learned was that it’s not really the institution, it’s the relationships that you make there.

 

While I am disheartened to see another institution in the church fighting in the tired-old style of corporate America, there is something I have seen these past weeks which has given me great hope. Regardless of what actions the Board and Faculty of General Seminary take or have taken, I have witnessed the students and alumni coming together across the continent and across social media to support and pray for and encourage one another. Yes, there has been griping and anger and raw emotion, but there has also been much love, support and companionship. Current and former students have joined together in a common cause and concern, and isn’t that what our institutions are supposed to be about in the first place: people working in relationship with each other with a common mission in mind? The true life of the institution is in those relationships and they seem to be stronger than ever right now.

 

 

There is an old saying: “Mind your pennies, and your dollars will take care of themselves.” Maybe it is the little acts of kindness, generosity and respect that ultimately make the larger corporate life that we share possible. Maybe we should spend more time trying to save individual souls, and less time trying to save the institutional church. Maybe if we start paying more attention to the real person to person relationships that make our institutions possible, and that ultimately give them meaning, we wouldn’t have to be worried about trying to rescue the institutions themselves all the time.

 

Institutions do not exist. Only the relationships are real.

Reclaiming the Feast of The Ascension

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Time to move the candle back:

Reclaiming the Feast of the Ascension

 

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Last week my parish celebrated its feast of title, The Feast of the Ascension, with a lovely sung mass Thursday evening. As the story of Our Lord’s Ascension into heaven was proclaimed in the gospel, the paschal candle was quietly extinguished. After the service was finished, the candle was removed to its normal resting place throughout the year. This past Sunday as we gathered to celebrate the 7th Sunday of Easter, the absence of the paschal candle, which has been standing in the same place for the past 40 days, was noticeable. Of course, the candle didn’t mysteriously disappear; it is still in the church, and we will still bring it out for baptisms and funerals, but its light doesn’t shine before us in quite the same way that it did throughout the past 40 days of Easter. Something profound has happened and we can see the change with our own eyes.

 

Before the liturgical changes of the 1960s, seeing the paschal candle extinguished on Ascension Thursday would have been a common occurrence in Roman Catholic and Anglo-Catholic parishes, but in recent times it has become more rare. In the traditional liturgical manual ‘Ritual Notes,’ direction is given that the paschal candle is to be extinguished immediately after the gospel is read at mass on Ascension Thursday. In Dennis Michno’s ‘A Priest’s Handbook’, produced after the liturgical revisions of the 60s, we find explicit instructions NOT to extinguish the paschal candle on the Feast of the Ascension, but to leave it burning until Pentecost. Why this change and why should we care?

 

Admittedly, whether a candle is lit for 40 days or 50 days can seem a pretty insignificant thing, but then it isn’t really about the candle, it is about what our attention is being drawn to, and that is very significant. Symbols are incredibly important, because they are always teaching, even when you don’t intend for them to be. The symbolism of extinguishing the paschal candle on the Feast of the Ascension seems pretty clear: this large candle, a symbol of the Resurrected Christ, is lit (or brought to life) at the great vigil of Easter and it stands in our midst for the following 40 days, just as the body of Jesus was visible to the disciples for 40 days after his Resurrection. Then as we gather to remember the Ascension of the Lord, the candle is extinguished and later moved out of sight. This doesn’t mean that the light of Christ has gone out of the world; what it does mean is that the light of Christ is no longer visible to us in the Resurrected body of Christ, as that has ascended to the Father, but now must be sought elsewhere.

 

Where then are we to look for the light of Christ once the paschal candle has been extinguished? The answer, I believe, lies in Jesus’s final prayer before his Ascension:

 

Now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

 

The light that shone from the Resurrected body of Christ has now ascended into heaven and is gone from our sight, but we can still see it reflected in each other. We Christians who are called by the name that the Father has given him, are the light of Christ in the world. In my church, everyone that is baptized receives a candle lit from the paschal candle and is told to “receive the light of Christ,” and in most churches that hold an Easter Vigil, the congregation’s candles are lit from the paschal candle. We are all bearers of the light of Christ, and when it can no longer be seen in his body, it is still here to be seen in ours. When the paschal candle is removed from the front of the church after Ascension Thursday we are given a clear visual cue for the next 10 days, and indeed for the rest of the year, that something has changed. Christ is no longer visible to us in the same way and I think this absence leads us, like it undoubtedly lead the disciples, to ask an important question: “what does Christ’s going from us, mean to us?”

 

One of the early church fathers, Gregory of Nazianzus, once wrote that:

“We know with holy and Catholic Faith that what was not assumed, was not redeemed.”

The Ascension of Christ into heaven is the consummation of all of his redeeming work, because it is then that the human nature that he took at his birth, the human body that he shared with us as his flesh and blood in the sacrament, the body that bore the stripes of his suffering and that died, and the body that triumphed over death: that body has now ascended into God’s kingdom and is now restored to union with God. Our own humanity and our own souls have a place in God’s kingdom because the son has ascended there to prepare that place for us.

 

St. Augustine, who himself claimed that the Feast of the Ascension dated all the way back to the apostles said:

Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth.

For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.

 

The world is different for us after the Ascension, and we would do well to take note of it.

 

So to my original question: why the change? In the middle of the last century, there was a trend among liturgical scholars in seeking to restore the church’s liturgy to forms that would have been known to the primitive church of the apostles. One of the products of this movement was a renewed focus on the importance of the Easter Vigil rite and another was an attempt to make the entire period between Easter and Pentecost appear as one cohesive season or one great festival. The “Great 50 days” as it is now known. I will not here go into the merits or demerits of the arguments made by the liturgical movement for Easter being 50 days, other than to say that for Eastern Orthodox Christians the argument has not found a following and their Easter season remains 40 days.

 

One of the changes that was proposed to extend the Easter season all the way to Pentecost (10 days after Ascension) was to leave the paschal candle burning until then. If the liturgical colors and the decorations and the paschal candle were to remain exactly as they were throughout the first 40 days of Easter, then the next 10 will just seem like an uninterrupted continuation of that season. The idea actually worked very well. Too well.

 

If we act like nothing happened 40 days after Jesus’s Resurrection, then that is exactly what people are going to think: nothing happened. In terms of the traditional liturgy, the primary symbol of Christ’s Ascension into heaven was the extinguishing of the paschal candle. When you stop showing people the symbol, you also stop showing people the truth that the symbol is meant to teach. The problem with making Easter one festival that extends from Easter Sunday all the way to Pentecost (regardless of the fact that this may have been done by some in the early church) is that it makes the Feast of the Ascension almost an incidental event between those two festivals. Ascension, which was once a period, has now become a comma and is quickly on its way to being an ellipsis.

 

Our Lord’s Ascension into heaven, as Saints Augustine and Gregory both rightly pointed out, is the culmination of all of his saving work done on earth. The Ascension is his return to living in the presence of the fullness of God, and as we each share in Christ’s body and blood, we who bear his name, so too do we have the promise of living fully with God as well. That is our hope as Christians; that is the goal to which we are headed. Our life is about restoring to the fullness of God that which has been separated from him. That should be the underlying theme to all that we do in this world and the point to which our spiritual lives are directed. We cannot merely skip over the Feast of the Ascension, as if it is just a minor moment in the life of Christ; it is in reality the point to which the entire story of Christ leads.

 

What has become the common practice since the liturgical reforms of the 60s? In many Roman Catholic Dioceses in the U.S., the Ascension Thursday observances were so poorly attended, that bishops began moving the commemoration to the following Sunday in an attempt to at least get the faithful to hear the story, and of course many protestant churches followed suit. Although this is well intentioned, it never quite works out, and in my opinion, usually has the opposite effect. Would we ever consider moving Christmas to the next available Sunday? of course not! The date is too important to us and we always manage to adjust our scheduled to accommodate it, and not the other way around. You cannot expect people to believe something is important, if you don’t show them that it is important.

 

We all know the arguments about weeknight holy days. Here at my parish, which is The Church of The Ascension, the attendance at our Ascension Thursday service is usually a little less than I might hope for, and it is our feast of title, but still it is beautiful reflection on the Ascension of our Lord, and of ourselves as well, into God’s Kingdom. It is also a service that is growing in attendance, not because we have moved it to a different day, but because people can see in our actions and in our liturgy, that something truly important is happening here and we have gathered to bear witness to it.

 

Some would say that the liturgical movement of the 1960s was an attempt to reclaim elements of the church’s liturgy that had been lost or undervalued through time. I would say that that is exactly what I, and many of my priest colleagues who value traditional liturgy are trying to do as well. It isn’t about trying to live in the past, it is about finding in old symbols undervalued and forgotten truths that the future still needs. In the end I am not really concerned with whether or not paschal candles are going to be extinguished on Ascension Thursday by other churches (although I do hope that they will consider it). The candle is not really the issue. The bigger question is whether or not there would be anyone in the church to notice if they did.