Christ Pantocrator, Cefalù Cathedral, Polermo, Italy, 12th century. Found on www.edgeofenclosure.com. Notice that the halo is also a cross.

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: [...] let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

That prayer is part of the Proper Liturgy for Good Friday, which I attended at my parish yesterday.  I will admit that I spent most of the service on the verge of tears (and parts of it well beyond the verge), but this is the point where I really felt myself brought short in a moment of wonder and awe.  First, because it so perfectly captures the mood of the moment, liturgically speaking.  And second, because this prayer is also said in the ordination rite of the Episcopal church, and it is a bit overwhelming to think about the day when, God willing, I will be ordained and this prayer will be part of that ordination ceremony.  But also, hearing it in the context of Good Friday made me see yet again how much the answering of a call from God can and perhaps must be about dying to our lives in order to be made new.

My favorite blogger (and she is really so much more than that), Suzanne Guthrie, writes:

Praying is a slow dying.  In prayer you give up something of yourself and appropriate something of the sphere of the Divine in a continuous cycle of dying and resurrection.  In prayer the growing soul leans toward the Light as a seedling leans toward the sun’s path.

I have had the privilege of preaching several times this Lent, and in one way or another the readings I have preached on have all seemed to say this same thing–not just Lent but life itself is that “continuous cycle of dying and resurrection.”  I will be preaching again tomorrow night, helping to unfold and break open the beautiful story of the disciples who are on the road to Emmaus when they so unexpectedly meet the risen Christ.  One of the things I love most about the story is its insistent physicality.  There is wounded flesh that we are invited to see and to touch, and there is bread that is broken and fish that is shared and eaten.  Resurrected life doesn’t erase all that comes before–Jesus is still Jesus, not a ghost or a vision–but it uses all that comes before and transforms it.  The death is real, but the new life is also, and the new life is not only real but eternal.

Russion icon of the Descent into Hell, found on Wikimedia Commons.

Yesterday was Good Friday, the starkest and most sorrowful day of the liturgical year, and tomorrow will be Easter Sunday, the most joyful and celebratory.  So what is today?  Holy Saturday is that in between day, where Christ lay in the tomb and also, according to ancient tradition, descended into Hell (and if that doesn’t convince you that God wants to be present in and to our entire lives, not just the good stuff…well, I’ll keep praying for you!).  Today, sitting in church looking at the stripped altar and the veiled cross, at the tabernacle thrown open to reveal its emptiness, it occurred to me that I spend most of my life in Holy Saturday, in the “already but not yet,” in the place where the Cross seems too real and the Resurrection is only a rumor of things yet to be.

Which is why I need that prayer so much–to be reminded that “all things are being brought to perfection” even if we can’t yet see it or feel it or know it through the burning of our hearts within us.

And if you haven’t already read Travis Scholl’s post on the Triduum, I highly recommend it.