This collect of Father Robert Crouse’s homilies illuminate the transcendent meaning of each week of the liturgical year.
Let Us Keep the Feast: A Commentary on the Pascha Nostrum
The world God made is a world of rhythm and rhyme. Seasons change and come again before leaving us once more. There is a predictable stability in the constant diversity that God has made, something C.S. Lewis once brought out in his masterpiece The Screwtape Letters. As his fictional demon once put it, God has…
Today in the Spirit: Easter 7B (The Sunday After Ascension)
As opposed to the Ascension Day readings, which center around the narrative of the event itself, the Sunday after Ascension Day (never Easter 7 as in the BCP 2019) assignments focus more on the implications of Christ’s ascending and taking the throne with the Father for the life of the believer. Particularly in Year B,…
Today in the Spirit: Easter 6B
As much as any other set of readings for a Sunday, the Easter 6 schedule puts on display the influence the love of the Father God has over those who believe in the Son. The assigned Gospel reading out of John 15:9-17 sets the tone. After teaching his disciples, I am the true vine… and…
Today in the Spirit: Easter 5B
On Easter 5 every year, the church moves us hard toward the mindset of expectation for the coming of the Holy Spirit. To get us there, the lectionary puts forward Jesus’ most explicit teaching on this matter, as found in the Last Supper discourse in John 14-16. For Easter 5B, the Gospel selection is John…
Today in the Spirit: Easter 4B (Good Shepherd)
By the end of Easter 3, the Sunday lectionary has covered all the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus recorded in Luke and John; so at Easter 4, the church makes a shift in the assignment of Gospel readings to those of our Lord’s teaching about the new life of the kingdom of God under his reign…
Today in the Spirit: Easter 3B
We continue in the Easter season with readings appropriate for the celebration of the resurrection of our Lord. The assigned Gospel reading from Luke 24:36-49 appears to be Luke’s version of the initial post-resurrection visit by Jesus to his disciples, which we heard last Sunday from John 20. If that is the case, Luke’s narrative…
Today in the Spirit: Easter 2B
The seven Sundays after Easter Day (including Pentecost Sunday) is the space the church uses to walk the believing community through Jesus’ resurrection appearances as revealed in the NT or his important teaching delivered before his death about living life by his resurrection power. The bulk of this material is found in Luke and John,…
Death, Be Not Proud: A Reading of John Donne’s Holy Sonnet X
“Death, be not proud,” also known as Holy Sonnet X, is John Donne’s great poem in mockery of Death. Composed in 1609, the poem was published posthumously in 1633. It is fitting that Donne got the final word, laughing at Death from his grave. The power of the poem is its reversal of our experience….
Today in the Spirit: Easter Day B
“Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!” At no time is the thrill of shouting out this acclamation greater than on Easter Day. “Enter then, all of you, into the joy of your Master. First and last, receive alike your reward. Rich and poor, dance together. You who have fasted and you…
