The Divine Hours of Lent

Easter Sunday – March 23, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

And so we cry out this morning, as our kind have cried for centuries on every Easter morning: Christ has died. Christ has risen Christ will come again. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Amen. ...

Read the full post here »

Holy Saturday – March 22, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Holy Saturday….Always that has seemed to me to be the strangest sort of name to put on this day. Holy? What is holy about utter silence, utter stillness, utter death? Hallowed, yes; but not holy, at least not yet, not for a few more hours. And so today I am caught all day between two tensions. I remember the horror and grief of yesterday, and I yearn toward the release and relief of tomorrow. Yesterday, a little after two o'clock, I did as I do every year on Good Friday. I put my communion kit...

Read the full post here »

Good Friday – March 21, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

As I was nearing the end of the months of compiling the Sayings of Jesus into the The Words of Jesus volume and, even more, during these last five or six weeks since it has been published, I received, and have continued to receive, some fairly thought-provoking questions. I have received enough, in fact, so that I have been able to discern a certain consistency or pattern in what reporters and other folk are interested enough to ask about with predictability. And number one on the list...

Read the full post here »

Maundy Thursday – March 20, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Jesus, as the Passover meal was ending, said, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you. But not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming back again to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. "From now on, I will not talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no power over me;...

Read the full post here »

Wednesday – March 19, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Lent ends today; or more correctly, this is the last, full day of Lent. Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday, and tomorrow night at sunset, Lent gives way to the Triduum…to the three days that are the culmination of Lent. Tomorrow night, Christian around the world will commemorate the Last Supper, the final Passover meal that Jesus ate with His disciples in the Upper Room. At the commencing of that meal, we are told that he removed His outer garment, took a basin of water, and then washed and dried the...

Read the full post here »

Tuesday – March 18, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Many long years ago--meaning well over a quarter of a century ago--I wrote a book about Lent entitled Final Sanity. It and/or pieces of it have been re-printed so many times that I don't even have a record of where and when, except to say that it was re-published in toto by Loyola Press some three or four years ago under the title, Wisdom in the Waiting. I love that title, Wisdom in the Waiting. I can say so because it was not my idea. But I also love the phrase "Final Sanity,"...

Read the full post here »

Monday – March 17, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

My father was an academic all of his adult life. He started his career as the entire faculty and administration of a tiny, rural school and ended up as the Academic Dean of East Tennessee State University, a position he held for almost two decades before his retirement. The undergraduate, master's, and doctoral level education necessary to the leading of that kind of professional life was expensive, however, even in the early twentieth century when he was trying to obtain it. As the fifteenth...

Read the full post here »

Palm Sunday – March 16, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Today is the first day of Holy Week, though actually, it's also a bit more than that: Palm Sunday is an interruption in Lent that manages somehow to lop off the next three days of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from the rest of Lent and then leave them, in a manner of speaking, just hanging there like a dangerous cul-de-sac of distraction and lost focus. But be that as it may, the triumph that Palm Sunday re-enacts is also a powerful counter-point to what lies ahead before week's end. Palm...

Read the full post here »

Saturday – March 15, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. That means the beginning of Holy Week or, put another way, that means that Lent--and death and winter--are effectual almost over. Tomorrow will be a time of celebration that, in essence, refuses to look dead-on at what will happen five days hence. Rather like the proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the ground to avoid visible and impending doom, we will hide our souls in palm branches and drown our sure knowledge of future things in rousing hymns. It is really only...

Read the full post here »

Friday – March 14, 2008

Phyllis Tickle — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 06:00:00 +0000

When I die, I would have it said of me that I have lived a thankful life. I didn't know that when I started out. Reared in the middle-class work ethic and on the American principle of individualism, I thought that I was supposed to produce something tangible--some kind of "product"--that would show I had been here and done my job, whatever that job was. Obviously, as a female, I was supposed to produce children, including going through all the procedures necessary for doing that job legally and...

Read the full post here »