Posts tagged resurrection
Touch and See (Mystagogy, Part 5)
Touch and See (Mystagogy, Part 5)

One of the great questions in the Church’s understanding of Christ concerns the properties of His resurrected Body. From the time Jesus exits the tomb, there is something evidently different about His embodied life from how it existed prior to His Resurrection. The Evangelists take special care to demonstrate that Jesus continues to have a body, that His body is continuous in some ways with the body the disciples had known before the Passion; yet His body now possesses new properties that begin to reveal and oblige a new relationship that Christ will have with His disciples as He ascends to the Father and the Spirit comes upon them. For the final entry in our series on mystagogy, then, we turn to the sense of ‘touch’ and its place in our worship of the risen Lord.

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Sacraments, TheologyFr. Hayden Butlerresurrection, the body
What Did You See? (Mystagogy, Part 1)
What Did You See? (Mystagogy, Part 1)

What did we see? Holy Week knows some of the most visually-engaging and emblematic moments of the Church year. One of the iconic sights of Holy Week comes with the Easter Vigil: the lighting and procession of the Paschal candle. It is right to begin our mystagogy with this sight. As the Psalmist writes, “In Your light will we see light.” It is by this light that we begin to see everything else.

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Liturgy, Sacraments, Church CalendarFr. Hayden ButlerEaster, Eastertide, resurrection
The Sad Brightness
The Sad Brightness

I am sometimes caught off guard at how my life’s events refuse to conform to the Christian calendar. Somewhere within me, I assume that the arrival of Easter should bring satisfying closure to the interior battles I fought during Lent. I love Eastertide, I love the renewal and the sense of hopeful expectation for the good work of ministry ahead. So why does it also feel like I’m back to the grind? Why has the world already moved along and why am I returned to the slow work of spiritual growth? For answers, I think we have to go back to Easter Day again.

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Spiritual Formation, Christian LifeFr. Hayden ButlerEastertide, lent, paradox, resurrection
The Lord of the Sabbath
The Lord of the Sabbath

Sabbath is remembrance. It is to remember and anticipate through a moment the world of God’s great seventh day, of Creation as it is known with God enthroned, consecrating all things and celebrating them with delight. But modern people have a difficult time approaching remembrance because they consider it a matter of ‘thinking’ rather than ‘being.’ This is not how the Scriptures communicate ‘remembrance’ to us.

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Christian Life, Spiritual FormationFr. Hayden Butlersabbath, rest, christian rest, death, resurrection, time, kingdom time