It is gray and drizzling this morning in Philadelphia. The weather held just long enough for us to get through Easter. The last stray plants for the garden will have to wait until later in the week. Marc Coleman, our photographer and webmaster, should have the week's photos up soon so that you can really see what it all looked like. He has a gift for catching the small details that give the feel of things.

For five days, I have given no thought to the roilings of global Anglicanism and lost track of the top stories on CNN. Holy Week and Easter exist outside of time and can still take us outside of ourselves if we are able to let them. I cannot know what the next year will bring, but, short of the Second Coming, Palm Sunday, Spy Wednesday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, the Vigil, and Easter Day will cycle around again and, with God's grace, I will be waiting.

Tomorrow there's work to tackle at the office and the more mundane churchly business of a vestry meeting where we will begin to evaluate the state of our current ministries. In the coming weeks we enter what Clementines call procession-tide: Annunciation, Ascension, Rogation, the May Festival, Pentecost, Trinity, and Corpus Christi. The calendar stretches the spirit of the season as long as possible before the green hangings and vestments of the Sundays after Pentecost descend upon us for an inordinately long time this year.

These entries have been an attempt to share what we do and to show a bit of what it means to be part of an Anglo-Catholic parish during the greatest days of the year. While details would vary from All Saints, Ashmont, to the Church of the Resurrection in New York, to Guardian Angels in South Florida, the basics are the same. The Maundy, the watch before the Sacrament, venerating the Cross, and hearing the deacon sing Exsultet, all bring us to the heart of our faith.

Today there are always those who are ready to re-fight the battle of the alabaster box: Couldn't this money have been used for the poor? Shouldn't we be paying more attention to Cause X and less time on all of the smoke and fuss? I find this to be a false dichotomy. As the hymn reminds us, the day will come "when rites and sacraments will cease." Till then, these are the signs that guide us and the touchstones that ground our lives in the life of Jesus Christ.

I have been fortunate to be able to devote my entire working life to social service and social justice work and I know that it is these and the other rites of the church, outlined in palm branches, brocade, and gilt, that keep me going and make me at least somewhat mindful of what the standard for our lives is to be. We have all known those parishes that devolve into the cult of the aesthetic experience with brunch following. Most all converts to Anglo-Catholicism go through a phrase of exceeding liturgical preciousness that their friends will never quite let them forget. But those who stay on mostly come through on the other side to a very different place.

People who stay with the catholic tradition come to see that the rites of Holy Week or the High Mass of a Sunday are pinnacles rising out of a more homely structure. It is the quiet praying, the daily praising of and pleading with God in the words of the psalms, the regular reading of scripture, sanctifying the work day with the Angelus, and the regular examination of conscience that set and hold the gems that are the great ceremonies of the Christian Year. It is all of these nasty, tiring practices that over time shape the soul and call forth catholic faith from what might otherwise become mere high churchery. Ignoring these and living on the dessert of the great rites alone can leave the soul in the strange position of being both bloated and malnourished. I know the temptation all too well.

And now I bring my sacristy rat's diary to a close. I have today to put the house in order and get ready for the return to everyday existence, but I know that I will have both sacred and profane memories of these days for the rest of the year: tenebrae in the crypt on Spy Wednesday, scrambling to the seven altars, catching a palm full of wax from the triple reed as the deacon sang the Exsultet, the organ coming to life at the Gloria of the vigil, and Canon Reid's Easter sermon reminding us that the risen Lord still returns to those who love him as he did on that first Easter morning.

We beseech thee, O Lord, pour into our hearts the love of thy Holy Spirit: that as thou hast now fulfilled us with this Paschal Sacrament, so thou wouldest make us to continue in all godly concord…

J.D. Treat
Easter Monday, 2005

Tenebrae on Spy Wednesday.

Choir rehersal on Maundy Thursday.

Setting up for the vigil.

Leaving S. Clement's on Easter Day.