The Tears of Christ

Makoto Fujimura's beautiful painting The Tears of Christ. Have a blessed Easter tomorrow as we celebrate the resurrection of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Hallelujah!

The Noonday Pause for Prayer

"Trailing clouds of glory do we come from God." William Wordsworth

I'm reading Seven Sacred Pauses, Living Mindfully Through the Hours of the Day by Macrina Wiederkehr. The above quote was in the section The Hour of Illumination, meaning the noon hour.

During the lenten season, I've been praying the hours beginning at 6 AM and ending at 9 PM. If I'm up at midnight and 3 AM, and I sometimes am, I'll pray then, too. I set the alarm on my phone to go off at the appointed hours so I won't forget to pray.

This one thing has made a big difference in my life. When I come to Sunday worship, I have no problem like I usually do of paying attention. Usually I'm constantly having to bring myself back to the sermon. My mind wanders... I'll go over what I'm cooking for Sunday dinner, I think about the coming week, I'll think about our children that live far away, and on and on and on...

But since I've been praying the hours for these few weeks, the 'wandering mind' problem is much less of a problem. I'm more attuned to God's spirit. I can feel my heart is softer. I'm nicer to my family. I'm learning to be more present. This personal prayer is good practice for corporate prayer.

It's a practice that I've come to love and won't be giving up once Lent is over.

Understanding the Lenten Season

I don't remember where I found this quote, but I like it. I'm trying to understand Lent better and this helped.

“As we begin it,” he writes, “as we make the first step into the ‘bright sadness’ of Lent, we see — far, far away — the destination. It is the joy of Easter, it is the entrance into the glory of the Kingdom. And it is this vision, the foretaste of Easter, that makes Lent’s sadness bright and our lenten effort a ‘spiritual spring. [...] Paradoxically, Easter necessitates Lent. “For we may then understand,” says Fr. Schmemann, “that the liturgical traditions of the Church, all its cycles and services, exist, first of all, in order to help us recover the vision and the taste of that new life which we so easily lose and betray, so that we may repent and return to it.”