The 1979 Book of Common Prayer consistently highlights the place of Baptism within the Christian life. Baptism is restored to equality with Eucharist as the two great sacraments given to us by Christ in the Gospels, the two Dominical Sacraments. Given this focus, I’m mystified why we’ve never chosen to incorporate the Rite of Sprinkling at the beginning of a festal Eucharist.
I have no wit, no words, no tears;
My heart within me like a stone
Is numb’d too much for hopes or fears;
Look right, look left, I dwell alone;
As a youngster I somehow convinced myself that the twenty-fifth was called “St. Mark’s Day” because it “marked” the last possible date for Easter—and because those in the ancient church were always fond of having fun with things like that. Years of living have not appreciably changed my suspicions, at least not about the church fathers,
Finally, I told Mark I’d had a touching, truthful-feeling conversation with a prisoner. “How wonderful,” Mark said. “Isn’t is a privilege that we get to have these conversations with them in the jail where they’re sober? Jail makes it easier for us to see how beautiful they are. You can’t see that on the outside.” But Mark,” I protested. “Don’t you expect things can change for them?”
He whose goodness is his own nature and not some nonessential gift, says, “I am the good Shepherd.” He adds the character of this goodness, which we are to imitate, saying, “The good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” He did what he taught; he gave an example of what he commanded.
O Lord, we cry to you,
with deep pain in our hearts and souls.
Our hearts ache, because of genocide
caused by the lust for power,
cruel hatred for others,
because of their race, religion or physical differences.
Of the true history of St. George very little is known. when we turn to the few accurate and early accounts which have come down to us, we find that there are two claimants to the title. According to the generally accepted version, St. George was born at Lydda about the year 270 A.D., and was martyred at Nicomedia in 303.
There is an old ritual called “beating the bounds” where the members of a parish go out and mark the boundaries of a parish in a city or village. The idea is not just territorial, but pastoral. When the community “beats the bounds” they are saying that they are in some way responsible to God for the people inside those boundaries. Every now and then, God shows us just what that means.
Veronese’s painting of a remorseful (but bare-breasted) young woman? Donatello’s statue of a hideously aged but spiritually purified hermit? What about the many film versions of Jesus’ life that depicted Mary as a prostitute? They could all be traced back to the sixth-century sermon in which Pope Gregory I conflated Mary of Magdala with other women in the Gospels, and identified her as an iconic repentant sinner.
The world, we are told, was made especially for man—a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.