Monthly Archives: September 2010

Autobiography

27 A VIGIL, A DEPARTURE, A BEGINNING OF SORTS

                           27   A VIGIL, A DEPARTURE, A BEGINNING OF SORTS

 

ONE OF THE JOYS of this pre-Christmas season, this Holy Advent, each year is to bring food baskets, clothing, toys, gifts to the poor.

 

Today my co-struggler, whose kindness to this poor priest has made a place for me to live during this sabbatical, and I, spent most of the day going to those who have little, to pick-up gifts for those who have even less.

Some of what we did was to bring needed furniture to recent refugees from a country in Africa torn by civil war.

These refugees, in their homeland, are persecuted because they are Catholic. Many of the family members have been murdered, the children sold as slaves.

Here they suffer multi-tiered pain. They are reduced to extreme poverty, suffer because of the colour of their skin.

Tragically even the locals who pride themselves on prefixing their own identity with the word ‘ African ‘ reject these refugees because they are too black, too African.

This evening as I walked about the neighbourhood praying the rosary, looking at all the multi-coloured lights, my heart reflected on how we ooh and ah at the colours of fireworks, Christmas lights, autumn leaves, seek out brightly coloured clothing, postage stamps, posters, etc., yet, when it comes to the variety of natural hues of skin created by the Father to make His children beautiful, we see those colours as a litmus test which is designed to render the other a stranger as if they were not one like ourselves.

All men are endowed with a rational soul and are created in God’s image; they have the same nature and origin and, being redeemed by Christ, they enjoy the same divine calling and destiny; there is here a basic equality between all men and it must be given ever greater recognition. Undoubtedly not all men are alike as regards physical capacity and intellectual and moral powers. But forms of social or cultural discrimination in basic personal rights on the grounds of sex, race, color, social conditions, language or religion, must be curbed and eradicated as incompatible with God’s design. [bg]

As this millennium of division, this century of fratricide, comes to an end and we enter the new millennium, the Jubilee Year, my ardent prayer is that we will come to love one another.

Most ardently of all I beg for enlightenment that wherever in my own heart there is a refusal to see anyone as my brother, my sister, and to love them truly, as Christ does, that I repent of my sinful arrogance, bow low before them, begin again in Christ to love.

AS I PEN THESE NOTES, gathering up once more the threads of this story of the immensity of Divine Mercy, I am in a hospital room, keeping vigil at the bedside of the oldest of our priests.

It is another night vigil, a time of solitude.

A blessed time.

When a soul, a human being, like this old priest, is so in possession of the Holy Spirit their very body is luminous, just being within the radius of their presence is to be bathed in holiness as surely as the earth is constantly bathed in light and warmth by the radiant sun.

We’ve, myself, other priests, men and women of The Community, been keeping this nightly vigil for a couple of weeks now.

Tonight Father seems better. At least the IV’s have been removed, the heart monitor is gone.

Through these nights I am coming to understand, though not necessarily yet fully integrate in my thoughts, feelings, trust, that the coming to terms with the end of earthly existence, is a holy, if at times emotionally terrifying, reality which, as a comedian has noted, simply means facing the fact that for all of us death is instantaneous.

Mostly takes us by surprise too, hence the urging of Christ [Mk.13:33,37], echoed by the Apostle [1Th.5:2], that we be ready.

There is, of course, no better preparedness than a holy life.

Yesterday, at dawn, I left here. Left a priest who at that time seemed already to have one hand pushing at the heavenly gates!

After a couple of hours sleep I was deep in the forest with the men cutting firewood.

My job is a simple one, suited to my age and health.

I make piles of tree branches where there are too many to be left to degrade naturally on the forest floor. Once I have a good sized pile I set it ablaze.

A little flame from a match, touched to dried twigs, and soon there is a larger and hungrier flame which devours the piles, the heat causing snow on nearby high tree branches to melt, fall into the fire in clumps which sizzle!

Now, by Father in this hospital, I am beside a flame lit by Divine Fire at his baptism as a child, fuelled with sacred chrism at his ordination.

It is good to be near this fire!

The fire, of course, is Divine, and we are salted, baptized, with this fire and called, for we are anointed with same, like Christ Himself to spread this fire He came to ignite [Jer.23:29;Mk.9:49;Lk.3:16;Lk.12:49;Acts 2:3].

 

 

 

Expiation

EMBRACING OBLATION PART 1

                                       PRIESTLY MISSION: EMBRACING OBLATION PART 1

 

In our day the word ‘victim’ has an almost exclusive echo referring to one who has been abused as a child, or for some it connotes those who perished on 9/11, for others it refers to women who suffer domestic violence.

 

 

 

 

Thus to connect the word victim and soul, as in victim-soul for many, at first hearing, suggests a soul victimized, rather than the classic true meaning, namely, a soul chosen by God, such as St. Faustina or St. Gemma Galgani, who accepts to suffer more than most people in this life, doing so of course in union with Jesus, following the Pauline concept of fulfilling within ourselves a sharing in the Passion of Jesus.

Some, most notably the ranks of the Martyrs, known and unknown, have this thrust upon them so suddenly their fiat, their yes, occurs simultaneously with being victim of an act of violence against Christ which unfolds within their own being.

Others, by Baptism for all, for some additionally and profoundly by Ordination, being immersed in the first instance in the death and resurrection of Christ,  and again some being configured to Christ Priest, lead lives of clear faith and fidelity, in what I most respectfully refer to as ordinary lives.

It is not necessary to have some extraordinary experience such as a vision or a locution to know deep in one’s heart the call of Christ, within the ordinary of our lives, to open ourselves to being, with Him, victim-soul, sacrificial-soul, or, the term I have, after for many years using the former two, sense is best for priests: OBLATION.

We know from her life that St. Gemma Galgani was told directly by Jesus of His need of victims, souls who would atone for others.

At the moment of our ordination, in persona Christi, we men who are ordained in point of fact are saying YES to this cry of Jesus across the millennia.

Any objective observer of the condition of the human family on this earth so ravaged by hunger, homelessness, violence, environmental anxieties, overshadowed by the culture of death with its relentless assault on the human person through abortion, obsessive materialism, the assault on Holy Marriage and Family life, etc., etc., or observing the state of the Church with the vast numbers of empty pews, or of the Priesthood where the sins of a few have wrecked the image of the many, surely can understand the urgent plea of Christ.

As Priests we find ourselves in the whole gambit of life conditions/situations from being on the threshold of death in a nursing home, perhaps no longer able even to concelebrate, to the newly ordained;  being part way through life and active priesthood, serving in parishes or the military or some institution of higher learning, or place of care for the sick or imprisoned; finally, but in no way least, many these days as priests live literally in prison or isolated, virtually invisible because, guilty or not,  we have been suspended from public ministry.

Irrespective of our situation or status we remain priest that is in, with Christ we are oblation.

Oblation: first for love of Jesus and thus for love of everyone, for their salvation.

Of course, no matter what my emotions may be doing on a given day, wherever and whatever my situation as priest is, we are talking here about fundamental faith and fiat, which means a constant willingness to trust Him and to surrender!

For myself all this is impossible without the help of Our Blessed Mother of Priests.

Every morning my first words to her are to ask her to share with me, and all my brother priests, her own heart, faith, love, fiat, trust and surrender.

If we imitate her that directly brings us into the depths of the imitation of Christ.

If we share in, and imitate, her own self-offering, her oblation, we will more fully be one with Christ-Priest, as priests, in His self-offering, oblation.

Since we become what we contemplate our gaze should always be fixed upon the face, the person of Jesus and there is no better place to begin this contemplation than, like the Shepherds, humbly approaching the cave where we find Jesus with His Mother.

She first presents Him to us.

To be there then is to be in the school of Mary, where we learn to be truly what we are, priest and to become fully what we are: priest- oblation in persona Christi.

Bethlehem leads to Calvary, the cave to the tomb, and the point of convergence, wherein all the reality of Christ, of our baptismal lives is both vivified and illuminated is within the depths of the Divine Liturgy, for Pope John Paul himself stressed we priests are “born from the Eucharist.”

In the depths of the Eucharistic mystery and reality we contemplate Jesus: sacrificial-self-gift; Jesus: victim; Jesus: oblation; Jesus: PRIEST.

Our Blessed Mother placed Jesus in the chalice of the manger for everyone to meet Him, gaze upon Him and from that chalice throughout His earthly life He poured Himself out, teaching, healing, proclaiming God IS Abba, Father!, until the time came for Him to place Himself on the paten of the Cross and pour Himself out to the last drop of His blood, for us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Reviews

I LIVE NOW, NOT I

                                                               I LIVE NOW, NOT I

 

 

Subtitled: Life as it is now becomes the mystery of Love in Christ – this brief work by Father Pat McNulty witnesses the power of grace, the true hope of baptismal life.

 

 

 

 

 

Published by Madonna House Publications it is readily available through: www.madonnahouse.org/publications

There are some autobiographical hints in this work but the real focus is how grace works within the reality, sometimes painful, experiences of our lives.

In essence this book is about the love affair between each of us and our Crucified Lover.

One brief quote:  …..in the darkness, the solitude, the desert when there are no more answers because there were no more questions, “someone” teaches us in That Place that our suffering and pain is no longer just about us. It is also about Christ and thus about everyone else because we are one in Christ.”

This is a book we highly recommend.

 

Expiation

PRIESTLY MISSION RESUMED

priest

The last time I completed an essay in this section was just shy of one year ago.

In the intervening time I have worked on the connected blog: http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/

As well, as can be seen by the occasional posting of chapters, completed an autobiographical work.

 

 

 

 

However I admit each time I tried to write more about being a victim-soul, a holocaust of His Love, one with Him in the Garden, on the Cross, I’d have a recurrence of the PTSD from which I suffer, as do most accused priests, both those actually guilty of the accusation, and especially those of us who have been falsely accused.

This is NOT to elicit some form of pity by turning this into a ‘woe is me’ diatribe, simply to be forthright about my own struggle, which I know from letters received, emails, phone calls, countless priests share.

No, thanks to both intensive spiritual direction and therapy, and yes proper medication, I seem able to resume a normal priestly mission, that is, to be what I am by the gift and mystery of ordination, what all priests are be we serving in ‘public’ ministry, enduring the immense suffering of banishment, imprisonment, illness, isolation in old age, whatever the situation we may be living in, be living, we are in persona Christi.

Some priests because of the way bishops treat the accused have given into discouragement, many to the extreme of suicide.

Others have simply walked away from everything and live as if ordination is something left behind like an old coat.

A few try and fight the bishops in the canonical or civil courts, but as regards the former it is the very judges in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who make the initial judgements in secret who are themselves the court of last appeal, and as regards the latter success there often means an even harsher punishment from the church.

That is why last year in the first of what was promised {do forgive the delay} to be a series of essays I wrote:

                               Many years ago, in the first attempt at this site for hope in the lives of priests, we ran the start of a series urging all priests, in particular those enduring punishment for actual sins/crime as well as those falsely accused, but suffering the same fate nonetheless, to embrace a life of expiation, becoming living oblations, victim-souls, holocausts of love, of Love Himself.

Clearly for all my enthusiasm I had a lot to learn about being a victim-soul, an oblation with Jesus, and admittedly still have a lot to learn, so what is written here and in the essays that follow is written by a mere beginner and a continuous learner.

Perhaps this is time to place again a critical Scripture which sustains the struggle:

                                 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His footsteps. [cf.1Pt.2:21]

It took me a long time to connect those powerful words of St. Peter to the three times in the Stations of the Cross where Jesus falls.

“The brutal experience of our falls and weakness can fling us to the edge of despair. We are strongly tempted to cry out that it is an injustice that God expects too much from us, that our cross is heavier than that of others.”  – Paul Evdokimov

We all know that the first aspect of the Cross with which we have been sealed at Baptism is the implanting deep in our being a yearning to be absolutely one with Jesus the Divine Lover, to daily take up our cross, which includes our very selves and all that happens to us, and follow Him.

Part of the cross of following Him is to embrace the tension of not knowing exactly where He is leading us, though ultimately it is across the threshold of death into the glory of resurrection with Him.

St. John of Kronstadt urges that: “Our duty is to endure, to pray, to humble ourselves, and to love.”

For priests today the greatest, yet most urgent challenge to love, is to follow Christ’s example and truly love and forgive our enemies, known and unknown.

That is key if we are to be what we are, oblation in persona Christi.

While there is an intrinsic moral obligation to struggle for truth and justice, to not simply roll over and allow the system, bishops, anyone, to crush us, for we cannot cooperate with evil, once all that must be done is done and the truth perhaps has been buried, and we with it by some CDF imposed penalty, then the moment of holy abandonment, of absolute surrender, indeed to passionately embrace the cross, to seek to endure, pray, humbly love as one with Christ accused, Christ in agony, Christ abandoned, Christ crucified, is NOW!

Finally, about the image above of a priest celebrating Mass yearning to be in Christ’s embrace:

I find this a powerful image of the agony of longing for restoration of all things to Christ within the Church, the Priesthood, the world today.

It is I believe an image of indomitable hope, endurance, love.

 

 

 

 

Autobiography

25 “BE BORN…IN SILENCE…A THOUSAND TIMES”

                                         25   “BE BORN…IN SILENCE…A THOUSAND TIMES”

 

 

 

 

I am meditating again today on Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter DIVES IN MISERICORDIA [On The Mercy of God] and my heart leaps at the radiant truth of:

The Cross is like a touch of eternal love upon the most painful wounds of man’s earthly existence. [ay]

This mid-Advent evening I return once more to the original notes as source material to continue this writing, my heart singing with gratitude that even now are my wounds being touched with the Cross — the kiss of His lips.

 

 

THE FIRST true spring rains of the season arrived during the night, applauded by thunder, backlit with lightening flash, dancing across valley ballroom a splendid cotillion, partnered by the wind !

When the ball had ended, the performers, long departed in their cloud-glass coaches beyond horizon hills, I went out onto the porch of this house of priests, breathed deep the fresh washed air, listening to the concert of frogs chanting their Matins at pond’s edge, down by the barns.

I sit here now, penning these thoughts, watch slow clouds drift across the, at this early hour, barely blue tinted sky.

Let us become like Christ since Christ became like us. Let us become gods because of Him, since He for us became man. He took upon Himself a low degree, that He might give us a higher one. He became poor, that through His poverty we might become rich (2Cor.8:9). He took upon Himself the form of a slave that we might be delivered from slavery (Phil.2:7&Rm.8:21). He came down that we might rise up. He was tempted that we might learn to overcome. He was despised that we might be given honour. He died that He might save us from death. He ascended to heaven that we who lie prone in sin may be lifted up in Him. [az]

 

My heart is moved, as I sit bathed in beauty, to reflect upon attentiveness to the Father through living and moving according to His Holy Will — like the wind, rain, clouds, chanting frogs — in a word, what we in this apostolic family call the duty of the moment.

The first thing that comes to my heart is the need to remember it is not a question of what, as in ‘ what am I to do in this moment ‘.

It is a matter of being aware of the ‘Who’ obedience is all about.

The duty of the moment is — for if it is not then it becomes a type of neurotic enslavement to a singular notion of self, and self-worth, based upon what I do — the duty of the moment is not what I do but rather who I am — a beloved responding to his Lover!

The duty of the moment is my response to my Divine Lover, and through Jesus who reveals His love in each moment of my existence, motivated by the Spirit of Love Himself, I come into communion of love with the Father.

In this Jesus Himself became obedient that we who are terrified of being, and thus become lost in doing, might be once more. [cf. Lk. 2:51; Jn. 4:34; Jn. 13:15]

Now, obviously, we can only be faithful to Jesus and do as He has done, in the duty of the moment, be penetrated by what De Caussade calls the ‘sacrament of the present moment ‘ if we are fully present to, in, the moment.

Yet in those days, so many decades ago when I was originally with The Community, I was far too wounded, neurotic, sinful, restless, fearful to be still, much less present enough in any moment, to experience but a minute speck of the above truth.

      Partially the problem in those days too was the simple fact of youth — as youth we have a    distorted sense of time — it either is the overwhelming slow moving phenomena barely grasped but experienced as a terrifying slow death, that is commonly called boredom – or – it is the fragile, tiny container into which we try relentlessly to cram maximum, and frequently un-discerned, experience, immediately!

Thus in our youth we rarely, if ever, consider time as something precious, for it can seem as limitless as the depths of oceans, rejecting any sober second thought that even oceans are limited.

Even less so do we consider time as a grace-love-gift from the Father, a precious and unrepeatable flow of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years which we are blessed with in the exact quantity necessary to frame the reality within which we might become saints.

Sin is a misuse of the grace of time, a waste of potential sanctification in the pursuit of no-thing-ness.

When we have some years of living, as I do now, ebbed and flowed through, we begin to appreciate the limit of this gift, the importance of being present to the totality of each moment of time.

We discover too how time itself, having been taken up into the heart of the Trinity by the Incarnation, is a constant duty of ours to participate in.

 The sanctification of which we participate in by the fidelity and love we bring: our true baptized selves into the treasury of each moment.

..fantastic, incredible, holy words….THE DUTY OF THE MOMENT IS THE DUTY OF GOD…ANYTHING done for Him is glamorous, exciting, wondrous — if only we can see it for what it truly is! But we are human. And it takes a long time, my dearly beloved ones, to see reality through God’s eyes. Unless we pray exceedingly hard, it takes a long time to ‘make straight the paths of the Lord ‘in our souls. [ba]

Once again it becomes a matter of being with Him.

Prayerfully.

Alone.

With Him.

Inner spiritual training begins with these words of Christ, ‘When you pray, go into your room, and when you have closed the door, pray to your Father who is in secret. [bb]

Writing these lines today I am conscious these truths permeate my being because years of blessing have been poured into my being.

My trouble, and why eventually I would leave the faith and The Community, back in the sixties was simply I was too broken to retain anything I learned about true Gospel living.

I was both a dried sponge, which once placed in water, gorges itself until satiated, and a sieve.

I’d no sooner take in some truth when I would lose it.

Or spill it.

He did not live from the center as an affirmed son would, that blessed stance which is a more or less unconscious position…he lived very self-consciously out of a cluster of diseased attitudes and feelings toward himself. He was split. There was a terrible chasm of non-being within him. He therefore had the disease of introspection….stood, as it were, outside himself, analyzing, hating, rejecting, pitying, despairing over himself……. To live from that center is to live from that which is not real but illusory, an illusory person living in an illusory world…..As a Christian, he had a home within, a divine center from which to live, but he knew nothing of it…[bc]

 

There is within all our lives a continuous thread of Divine intervention: GRACE!

Now grace, obviously, works within the created order, for it is within that order we live.

Sin is a determination on our part to re-arrange the Divinely constituted order into something we fraudulently attempt to claim is more suited to our immediate gratification.

God permits our futile attempts at re-arrangement, for He respects the very order He has created, is faithful to what He has set in motion, especially our very being, even when we war against that Divine right order.

The ever flowing river of grace is His active love of us, but here too He respects our freedom, a freedom which He places within us when He creates us.

Grace then is NOT a Divine imposition.

It IS the True Lover’s invitation we accept the ultimate gift: Himself!

It is first and foremost, in the sacramental order, Baptism, which reorients us into a right ordered relationship with the Trinity.

There is a paradox in Baptism, for while this sacrament reorients us at the same time it removes us, that is, with Baptism we enter into that communion of love where, while we remain in the world, we are no longer to be of the world.

Through Baptism, in a real sense, our place becomes no-place!

This because in truth we are created and more vitally baptized to dwell, even here on earth, in the Trinity and, within especially our communion of love with the Father, to live and move and have our being.

This indwelling is itself a type of holy mystery, for we can only truly dwell within the Trinity who first dwells within us.

The holy import of this is tremendous and should move us to a constant state of awe and adoration!

We are gifted with free will and hence can, frankly, mess not per se with the effectiveness of grace, for grace is never defective, but with the hesitancy or fullness of our response to, and co-operation, with grace.

Significantly, as Leanne Payne rightly teaches, this whole movement of response to grace, of openness to the communion of love, is constitutive to my knowing, or at the very least seeking to know, become, the person He has created.

Thus the first great effective activity of sacramental grace in Baptism, by our being washed in the Blood of the Lamb, is our re-creation, our truly being born. This IS our true birth and through this being created anew we can discover the real I — I as child of the Father, disciple of the Son, temple of the Holy Spirit!

Once I know I am ‘I’, and the knowing means rejoicing, being thrilled at my very existence, an existence which is relational, communion of love — then I can authentically say YES!

My yes is to a person.

Not to some idea or rule of life or philosophical notion — though as I live elements of those necessarily become aspects of living.

My yes is to a real, living person, the Person par excellence for He is the Incarnate One.

My yes is to Jesus.

Yes to Jesus means opening wide the doors of my being to His communion of love, to His every word, and I make concrete this yes by heeding, following, living His word, the Gospel, hence my yes to Jesus is yes to communion of love, to life with, to having my being within, the Holy Trinity. [Jn. 14: 23-26]

DAY AND EVENING have come and gone!

As I begin to write again it is a tremendously fresh and beautiful Sunday afternoon.

A brilliant day as if the sunlight were dusting gold flecks upon every leaf and blade of grass.

The Eighth Day!

KRISTOS ANESTE EK NEKRON THANA CONPATESOS KAI TOIS EN TOIS MNEMASI ZOEN KHARI SAMENOS!

Sung during Holy Mass this day with all the passion, surely, of those Ointment Bearing Women as they returned from the tomb, knowing their tenderness was not needed: CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD TRAMPLING ON DEATH BY DEATH AND ON THOSE IN THE TOMBS LAVISHING LIFE!

Truly, such as through the sacraments of Baptism and repeatedly thereafter in the sacrament of Confession, He lavishes life upon us even while we are yet in the tomb of original sin or actual sin.

The once brown fields this day are greening with new life, trees tremble with unfolding buds, birds sing more varied songs than ear can embrace for sheer wonderment at His once again making all things new!

In the soft sand of the winter- ice- retreating- gouges among the higher slants of the hills swallows build nests, as chipmunks, on my walk, scurried about the forest floor all a-chatter with indignation that a mere man dare walk into their world!

A young man, visiting here, came up to me all eager and fair shouted: “Father!

What must I do to be baptized? “

“Say, YES, Jesus! “

Of course there is more to it than that, like careful instruction-preparation.

But in that moment naught more needed to be said.

No matter how much the men and women in office seem to wreck their part of the Church’s fabric by their humanness — hence sinfulness and unpleasant personality traits — it does not happen. Christ in their office does not allow the Church to be wrecked because of the weakness of the persons who represent Him……we are dealing with the MYSTERIUM ROMANUM…dealing with the passion of Christ and the behaviour of the apostles, who were not such hot potatoes. One denied Him, one betrayed Him, all but one ran away when He died. There are only two possible conclusions: either the Catholic Church IS divinely founded, and Christ is IN all the people who rule His Church, or there IS no Catholic Church and the whole thing isn’t worth belonging to. Take your choice. [bd]

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling on death by death, and on those in the tombs, lavishing life!

In what tomb, or tombs, do I languish?

Or hunker down in like a frightened lost child who seeks shelter against or within any place that appears to have about it a definitive solidity?

Certainly in those original years when I lived with The Community, because of my split-ness, I was making of the community life itself a type of tomb.

 

 

Autobiography

24 DEATH, THY STING, IF FAITH LOST

THERE is, as I reflect on yesterday’s question from my confessor, a type of urgency to complete this book.

I’m not sure if the urgency is in response to the goad of grace or the restlessness of my ego — but I turn once more to the original notes and am amazed at how His Mercy is always greater than our capacity for sin.

I AM DISTRACTED, anxious, grieving this morning.

 

 

 

 

The spring sun has shaken all the ice-glass from the trees, woven there by days of freezing rain.

The fields, washed of snow by warmer rain, reveal their yellow-brown last year’s fashion, clamouring for the new season’s outfit.

On this day a year ago I had arrived in the west at a new assignment with The Community.

Barely unpacked, I was summoned by a phone call.

Years before, and for years, there had been three buddies.

Now the middle one was telling me, the oldest one, of the youngest’ death.

Though by now priest, and supposedly man of faith, the act of death stung my being.

Death had stolen friend from among the earthly living and flung that friend beyond the tangible sense those of us, left behind, could easily touch.

What had started out as the sophomoric promiscuity of the young had, not without heated debate, struggle, matured into a pure and authentic male on male friendship.

The agent of death has been aids.

When the youngest had first been diagnosed he had called me, not as friend but now as priest-father, with one simple question:

“Do you think God has allowed this to happen to me so I might come home?”

Home being sacramental life with Christ.

I said: “Yes.”

This day of the phone call announcing the completion of his journey home seemed to have arrived so suddenly.

Not unexpectedly, perhaps. Suddenly, nonetheless.

Confusion that, during that Day of the Resurrection of Christ, death should still sting so mightily.

Last year, like now, Easter.

This year, like then, death stings still.

I cry out for the grace of help for in my belief I need help with my unbelief.

From the Stichera of Easter from the Divine Liturgy, this, from St. John Chrysostom:

O DEATH WHERE IS YOUR STING? O Hades where is your victory? CHRIST IS RISEN AND YOU ARE ABOLISHED, CHRIST IS RISEN and demons are cast down, CHRIST IS RISEN and the angels rejoice, CHRIST IS RISEN and life is freed, CHRIST IS RISEN and the tomb is emptied of the dead: for CHRIST being RISEN from the dead, has become the Leader and Reviver of those who had fallen asleep. To Him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.