Wednesday in Holy Week
by Bishop Daniel
on April 16, 2014
- Morning Prayer in the cathedral.
- Prepared for the 12:15 Mass.
- Consulted with the Archdeacon on a couple of pastoral/administrative matters.
- Took care of registering for the June Province V House of Bishops meeting.
- Attended to an administrative/pastoral matter pertaining to one of our Eucharistic Communities that is both important and relatively urgent.
- Ditto the above, only a different church.
- Began the process of finishing and refining my Easter sermon.
- Showed up to celebrate the midday Mass in the cathedral chapel, but … no congregation. Since it’s a Prayer Book Holy Day, I felt obliged to say the Ante-Communion–the Eucharist up to the Offertory, where customary Anglican discipline dictates I could go no further.
- Lunch from Hardee’s (yes, a new place for me), eaten at home.
- Completed the work on my Easter homily that I began before lunch.
- Attended to yet another pastoral/administrative issue, this one involving an individual.
- Wrote a substantive and belated reply to a letter concerning last month’s dustup in the larger Nashotah House universe.
- Evening Prayer in the office.
- Drove home, grabbed Brenda, and headed to St John’s, Decatur for the sixth consecutive Wednesday. Only, this time, it was just to sit in the congregation for a surpassingly lovely rendition of Office of Tenebrae, done in conjunction with an elite vocal ensemble from Millikin University. Tenebrae is a poetic gloss, a textual echo, of the essential Holy Week narrative. It never tells the story, so if you don’t already known the story, it’s a pastiche of incoherence. But for those whose story it is, Tenebrae creates a space to just *be* in it. What a blessing this was.
- Started the day with 16 tasks. Accomplished 7 of them.