Also joyful: Easter. Yesterday I had the chance to go to Easter Wednesday Mass in the Extraordinary Form, and it was really very beautiful. Next year I think I will do my best to get to every Easter Week Mass I can.
Now that Lent is over, I feel more comfortable revealing that neither Benedict Ambrose nor I ate a scrap of meat--nor drank much alcohol--after Shrove Tuesday. This was a bigger deal for B.A. than for me, and I am really impressed by him. That said, we both have the thought of the Greek Orthodox Lent to keep us humble.
We broke our fast with the traditional Polish Easter soup called żurek, which contains white sausage, hard-boiled eggs and fermented rye juice. Then, after Mass, we went with friends to their home in the countryside where we ate a wonderful feast, including roast lamb, and drank really quite a lot.
I baked a babka (bundt cake) and a mazurek for the feast. Behold the mazurek:
The next day B.A. both felt very rocky, and I felt awful when I woke up yesterday at 3 AM, for B.A. and I celebrated Easter Tuesday by going out for steaks and Malbec wine. Apparently when you go without meat and wine for weeks, you should ease yourself into both gradually.
Easter Week has been solemn, too, because of the Sri Lankan martyrs and confessors. We can hope the martyrs went directly to heaven; the little children certainly did, and the adults must have known there was a chance this could happen but went to church anyway. Now my prayers are for the maimed, injured and bereaved.
By the way, if anyone has the brass to tell you that Christianity is in Asia only because of colonialism, be sure to tell them A) that Christianity began in Western Asia, and B) that St. Thomas got to India long before St. Francis Xavier did. Naturally, your interlocutor will be confused, for he will be under the impression that there were no Christians in Asia until Donald Trump landed there with the PTL Club some time in the 1990s.
Mrs. McLean, I have been reading your stories on the TLM in Edinburgh for a number of years, and we were blessed to be in attendance during the Triduum (we were the obnoxious Americans who didn't get the time correct for Holy Thursday and who managed to stand when everyone else was kneeling at the Easter Vigil). What a lovely little parish group!
ReplyDeleteI was particularly impressed with the choir. These men took on a lot of chant and pulled it off very well (especially Good Friday, with two singers). I believe that Mr. McLean certainly earned his Easter Lamb and his drinks.
In that small wooden church with a small congregation giving Almighty God the worship He has been given for millennia, it certainly had a Recusant feel, as if we had to constantly be on guard and hold tightly to the rites and to our Faith.
God bless and Happy Easter!
Thank you, Nathan! I'm glad you shared Triduum with us!
DeleteDear Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteI am writing to express my sincere sorrow and deep deep sadness at the burning of the Notre Dame cathedral. It is a great heritage of humanity. I am so very sorry. I grew up in Goa and felt the extraordinary power of grace and mercy in the person of Jesus Christ and his church. I am not a Christian, but I do not doubt the divinity and reality of Jesus Christ as a holy, divine and singular man, or that he acts personally in the lives of those who choose to follow his path in this world and lifetime. So it with really with enormous sorrow that I am writing to express my deepest wishes to you and your family. If there is a contribution towards it rebuilding that you know of I would like to contribute.
best wishes,
Aarti Sethi
Dear Aarti, thank you very much. There are indeed rebuilding funds. Here's a link to La Fondation du Patrie, which is dedicated to preserving French buildings and monuments: https://don.fondation-patrimoine.org/SauvonsNotreDame/~mon-don?_cv=1 And here's a link to the Friends of Notre Dame page in the USA: https://www.notredamedeparis.fr/friends/donate/
Delete