How does he do it? An Op-Ed in the NYT that ends up as a meditation on the liturgical year and the power of Easter as a festival of baptismal renewal would be hooted off the pages if most traditional religious leaders wrote it. But there it is, in Sunday's edition, now number three on most emailed articles in the Times. He writes in part:
Then comes the dying and the living that is Easter.
It’s a transcendent moment for me — a rebirth I always seem to need. Never more so than a few years ago, when my father died. I recall the embarrassment and relief of hot tears as I knelt in a chapel in a village in France and repented my prodigal nature — repented for fighting my father for so many years and wasting so many opportunities to know him better. I remember the feeling of “a peace that passes understanding” as a load lifted. Of all the Christian festivals, it is the Easter parade that demands the most faith — pushing you past reverence for creation, through bewilderment at the idea of a virgin birth, and into the far-fetched and far-reaching idea that death is not the end. The cross as crossroads. Whatever your religious or nonreligious views, the chance to begin again is a compelling idea.
Read it all here. He's just a very thoughtful and very compelling personality. What can be done to break ourselves open to matter for the 'the least of these'? That is a good question for Easter. That's the point of being joined to Christ's death and resurrection, that we might become 'like' him and live 'in' him. Martin Luther said, 'we are Christ's/Christs, with and without the apostrophe."
Anon and peace,
Chris
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