The Joys of These Days

There is something so beautiful about living in the liturgy in these days. From the triumphal procession on Palm Sunday to its solemn reading of the St. Matthew Passion, from the commemoration of the Supper's institution to the Good Friday Chief Service with its hymnody and the St. John Passion, from the darkness of the Tenebrae to the reversal of Tenebrae in the great Vigil that awaits us this evening, and finally to the explosive joy of tomorrow's Matins and Divine Service, where a returned Alleluia will ring out with unbridled gladness. I am so thankful to belong to a parish that GETS all this. Where for our corporate life this is the "feast of feasts" and where so many pour so much energy, so much effort, into the celebration.

Every year when we walk through this with the rich preaching and music that attends it, it convinces me anew that there's no joy in all the world like being a baptized child of God, welcoming in another Paschal Feast.