This morning we celebrated the final Matins and Divine Service for this week of Easter. Being a generous sort of guy, I let St. Augustine preach on the nature of alleluia. Good stuff! I'll have to use some of it in the patristic quote for the day. I've enjoyed the services of Holy Week and Easter Week a great deal, but I am looking forward to sleeping in just a wee bit come Friday and Saturday.
Today we had ten folks gather for the Divine Service - again, ranging in age from about six to sixty some. Right before the service today, I had read Koenker's words:
The local congregation joins with the blessed departed of all times and places as the one body of Christ. The decisive event in history has occurred in the person and work of Jesus Christ, through whom the old age has been brought to an end. The preaching and the sacraments of the church always point back to this event. yet the end is set to the life of the old man, too, in the Eucharist, for each believer arises again as a new man in Christ. And we anticipate here His final consummation, the still-awaited end of the present age. (p. 63)
That eschatological theme permeates these Easter day liturgies: there is the sense that in the great 50 days we are already in the eschaton, living from the End, where Love has triumphed and the song of praise rings on uninterruptedly for the aeons. The heavenly alleluias sound nearer than at any other time of the church year.
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