A PASCHALTIDE INTERLUDE: Happy Easter to One and All!

Dear Friends,

Please allow me to take this moment to interrupt my Priestly Milestone Series to wish you all a very Happy and Blessed Easter! Life has been pretty crazy these days of TRIDUUM moving from one aspect of the liturgy to the next, with a few breaks to shift gears as we celebrate different aspects of the Paschal Mystery. Father John Bostwick reminded me of an expression that is sometimes used at Easter in the Orthodox tradition: "Christ is Risen! ...His priests are dead, but Christ is Risen!" Yes, there's a lot of work going on these holy days, but I am very grateful for the loving assistance of so many who have made our celebration of TRIDUUM at Old Saint Joe's such a wonderful, sacred event. I'm sure our music ministers, our liturgical ministers, our sacrastans, our church decorators and our social activities coordinators are also ready to drop, but their good works do not go unnoticed or unappreciated.

So before the Vigil begins tonight and before I resume my five-part series, I just wanted to say thank you to all who have made this week truly "Holy!" God love and keep you all!

Now the green blade rises from the buried grain,

Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been;

Love is come again like wheat arising green.

In the grave they laid him, love by hatred slain,

Thinking that he would never wake again.

Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen;

Love is come again like wheat arising green.

Forth he came at Easter, like the risen grain,

He that for three days in the grave had lain;

Raised from the dead, my living Lord is seen;

Love is come again like wheat arising green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain,

Your touch can call us back to life again,

Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been;

Love is come again like wheat arising green.

- John M. C. Crum

In His Resurrection,

Father James Baraniak, O. Praem.