The Festival of the Reformation

Though we celebrated the festival last Sunday, today is the actual day. And here are Krauth's wonderful words on the subject (HT: Pr. Messer):

"When the Festival of the Reformation shall come and shall wake no throb of joy in [the Church's] bosom, her life will have fled. For if the Reformation lives through her, she also lives by it. It has to her the mysterious relation of Christ to David; if it is her offspring, it is also her root. If she watched the ark of the Lord, the ark of the Lord protected and blessed her, and when it passes from her keeping, her glory will have departed. Let her speak to her children then, and tell them the meaning of the day. In the pulpit, and the school, and the circle of the home, let these great memories of men of God, of their self-sacrifice, of their overcoming faith, and of their glorious work, be the theme of thought, and of word, and of thanksgiving. The Festival of the Reformation is at once a day of Christmas and of Easter and of Pentecost, in our Church Year; a day of birth, a day of resurrection, a day of the outpouring of the Holy Ghost. Let its return renew that life, and make our Church press on with fresh vigor in the steps of her risen Lord, as one begotten again, and born from the dead, by the quickening power of the Spirit of her God. Let every day be a Festival of the Reformation, and every year a Jubilee." -- Charles Porterfield Krauth, The Confessional Reformation and Its Theology (St. Louis: CPH, 2007), p. 4