Holy Mysteries
Encountering the Risen Jesus
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Sixth Week of Easter
“We are not to restrict God’s presence in the world
to a limited range of ‘pious’ objects and situations,
while labeling everything else as ‘secular’;
but we are to see all things as essentially sacred,
as a gift from God and a means of communion with him.”
– Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox WayI nformed by last week’s devotions on our participating in the life of the Trinity, we move into sacramentality. Within our Anglican tradition, we find that faith and reason are not seen as separate or opposed, in the same way that we see no sharp division between the sacred and the secular. We live in a world hallowed by the presence of God in which the natural world and other people alike can and do convey something of that divine presence. This means that the creation can be a “sacrament,” an outward and visible sign, of God.
By taking the word sacrament in its broadest sense, as meaning the visible sign of something sacred that remains hidden, we could say that the whole world is sacramental. It would mean that material things are, as seen by humankind, the signs of things that are spiritual and sacred. The flowers near the altar, the people in the pews, the bread and wine of Eucharist, the birds at the feeder, houseplants, the fish in the aquarium . . . I could go on and on . . . are all sacramental. Because sacramentality is the principle that says everything in creation—living creatures, places, the environment, and even the universe itself—can reveal God. It is under this principle that the division between sacred and secular is erased: Everything carries the potential to reveal the holy, because everything comes from the same source, in the Holy Trinity.
There is an important distinction to make here that we find in the writings of William Temple, who held the highest two positions in the Church of England in an important point in more recent history. As the Archbishop of York from 1929-1942 and then the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1945, he was a renowned scholar who became a national and international leader in the ecumenical movement. In a series of lectures “Nature, Man, and God” he had given from 1932-1934, Temple spoke of the Sacramental Universe. In a lecture by this title he wrote of faith and reason saying, “the progress towards truth in religion and in science follows converging lines. We serve truth as a whole most effectively, not when we seek to impose religious ideas upon science, nor when we seek to impose scientific ideas upon religion, but when studying both religion and the physical world with open and unprejudiced minds we seek to read their lesson.”
In the Incarnation, God becoming human in Jesus, we see the Holy Trinity entering into the creation in a way that revealed the spiritual and the material could be united. Temple said later in this lecture on the Sacramental Universe that the world, “which is the self-expressive utterance of the Divine Word, becomes itself a true revelation” as “what comes is not truth concerning God, but God Himself.”
The corrective here is that material would, can, and does reveal something of the divine. Yet we know that Jesus, the Incarnate Word, is the ultimate sacrament through which we see all sacramental reality most clearly. What we glimpse imperfectly through the material world, we see revealed fully in Jesus. His life and ministry, his death and resurrection, his sending the Holy Spirit as a comforter and advocate, give us the best lens through which to see the world and our place in it rightly. As the Apostle Paul wrote, “For it is God who said, ‘Let light shine out of the darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II Corinthians 4:6).
For Temple, Natural Theology, which relied on what we learn from the creation alone without the specific revelation of the Incarnation, “ends in a hunger which it cannot satisfy” as “the arch falls for lack of its keystone and the gulf between mind and the universe in which it appears remains unbridged.” Jesus provides that bridge between the sacramental universe in which we live and the Holy Trinity that is its source and its end.
In coming to see that we live within a sacramental universe, we are given eyes to see that the whole creation is shot through with the presence of God. Then we can find the providence of God in the creation, as the earth tends to bring forth what we need to sustain us. We see the grace of God in the rain falling on the just and the unjust. We can come to see the face of Christ in other people as the God who needs nothing gives us the gift of neighbors in need to whom we can share the love we have for our creator and sustainer.
• Temple believed creation is sacramental. What parts of creation are most sacramental/holy for you?
• When was the last time you were doing something in your daily life that you felt a connection to God and creation?
“… scientists now tell us that all light in the universe
is electromagnetically connected and
that all natural light is in fact one.
The Risen Christ is the personification of
this one Light that includes all light,
which is why he is always described as ‘dazzling white’
or ‘like lightning’.” (Matthew 28:3)
– Richard Rohr, Immortal DiamondIn the first week of this devotional, I named how I came to see the Shroud of Turin as a sacred relic despite the evidence that pointed to its being a much later artifact. After reading the article that disappointed me, I had the serendipity of finding two pencils—one, a small red pencil that had Time magazine printed on it; the other, a white pencil with the names of the books of the New Testament printed on it. I didn’t talk about this incident that felt to me like confirmation. I read numerous books and articles on the Shroud and joined the website, shroud.com, so that I would receive updates about it. I corresponded with Barrie Schwortz, the official photographer for the 1978 Shroud study that produced the images I first saw in Atlanta. I also purchased a few images, myself. Schwortz created and was admin for the shroud.com site for nearly 30 years. Sadly, as I was starting to work on this reflection, I received the news that Barrie Schwortz had passed away after a short illness.
Despite the carbon dating result, my conviction that the Shroud was real has remained firm. The BBC News Magazine wrote an article in 2015 that said, “According to an international team of scientists and other interested folk called the Yahoo Shroud Science Group, hypotheses about the genesis of the shroud ‘involving the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth cannot be rejected’”. Among them, the group members write, “are hypotheses correlated to an energy source coming from the enveloped or wrapped Man, [and] others correlated to surface electrostatic discharges caused by an electric field. Since these hypotheses appear to invoke processes unknown to science, which presumably occur during a return from the dead, it’s technically true that science can’t disprove them – nor really say anything about them at all.”
William West wrote:
“I spent five years researching my recently-published book Riddles of the Shroud: Questions Science Can’t Answer, and the evidence suggests the Shroud covered Jesus at the point of resurrection.
The evidence is so strong that it is hard to imagine anyone with an open mind seeing it as anything less than compelling. Despite the fact that most people seem to think research on the Shroud came to an end with the carbon dating in 1988, it has become the most researched single artifact in history. The bottom line is that science has shown the image on the cloth is an ‘impossible’ image – one that cannot be replicated. One of the main reasons is, as scientists have now confirmed, the image on the Shroud had to be caused by a mysterious burst of light – that is, electromagnetic radiation.
In short, the evidence indicates the Shroud was wrapped around a real body that simply ‘dematerialised’ without disturbing the perfectly formed blood clots on the cloth. That could only happen through an event like that described in the Gospels as the resurrection – an event that, as the Gospels state, freed Jesus’ body from material constraints.”
Vindication arrived this year as new scientific tests conducted on the Shroud of Turin have revealed that the flax used to make the linen was grown in the Middle East. The results of isotope tests provide new evidence that the shroud is the actual garment that was used to cover the body of Jesus Christ following his crucifixion – and is not a forgery that was created in medieval Europe. Fragments of cloth taken from the shroud show that its flax originated in the western Levant, a swathe of land occupied today by Israel, Lebanon and western parts of Jordan and Syria.
A scholar renowned for his books on the life of Jesus, Jean-Christian Petitfils told the National Catholic Register of how close examination of the shroud points to facts about the crucifixion including the body being flogged very violently, in the Roman way, and not in the Jewish way, with a flagrum, which had two small balls and a barbell between them, the trace of which can be seen under a microscope. He said there is evidence of Jesus being speared in his side that reveals the type of Roman spear used. Looking at the accurate details seen in the relic, Petitfils said, “The examination of the Shroud leads us inevitably to the mystery of the Resurrection, although this burial cloth is not in itself a proof of the Resurrection, which can only be experienced and understood through faith. But it does give us some very unsettling clues.”
And yet, as satisfying as this proof is, it still does not remove the mystery of the Shroud for me. While we can guess at what happened, I don’t believe we will ever actually know and thus the Shroud will remain clouded by mystery as God is shrouded by mystery.
• Something that proves the presence and power of God may not speak to another person. What do you point to as one of the reasons why you believe?
“When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my lambs.’ A second time he said to him, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ He said to him, ‘Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Tend my sheep.’ He said to him the third time, ‘Simon son of John, do you love me?’ Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, ‘Do you love me?’ And he said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep. Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’ (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’” (John 21:15-19)
When Jesus pulls Simon Peter aside and asks him, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?”, it is the third time he has appeared to the remaining eleven after being raised from the dead. On this third appearance, he eats a breakfast of bread and fish with them. Right afterwards, he takes Peter away from the others, although I am sure they are being watched by at least a few of the disciples, as Jesus gives his ‘Rock’ some final instructions.
But Jesus doesn’t ask Peter only once if he loves Him. He asks three times. It seems clear that this is a chance for Peter to redeem himself for having denied Jesus three times before His death. It is difficult to believe that wasn’t what was on Peter’s mind as he answered for the third time, because he is hurt when Jesus asks the question a third time.
Jesus is rounding up one more lost sheep in letting his friend, Simon Peter, affirm his love before calling to him once more saying, “Follow me.” Peter will continue to walk in Jesus’ ways being faithful to death as he was hung on a cross. Peter said that he wasn’t worthy to die like Jesus and at his own request was crucified upside down. But in the decades before that last act of devotion, Simon Peter shared the mercy and forgiveness he found in that stroll on the beach. Peter wanted everyone to experience that same love of God.
We too know that the love of God is not supposed to be like a pocket warmer, that keeps you warm while leaving others out in the cold. Jesus did not teach us to just love God and love ourselves, though that is two thirds of what he said. Jesus also taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves.
We have hope in the God who goes to the depths of human existence to love, truly love, those who see themselves as lost, unfit, and sinful. God is always offering a chance for a clean slate, a fresh start, and will never leave you to the chaos that threatens to consume you. God will send a net.
God knows you fully, loves you unreservedly, and wants better for you. God wants the same for others in your life. And when you invite them to join you in worship in your church, you are not trying to grow a church, but throwing your friend a lifeline. And you can be sure that your congregation is one where they will be welcomed and loved by the congregation and by the host of our feast, who is Jesus.
We don’t have to have all the answers to share God’s love for what we do have as followers of Jesus in a relationship with the God who is working to redeem our world one wild and precious life at a time. We have the knowledge that everything we now see and experience is not all there is. The creator of the cosmos knows you by name, has always loved you, will never give up on you even if you deny him, and wants better for you.
• Jesus asked Peter the question three times. Have you ever had to prove your love for something or someone more than once?
And truly, I reiterate,.. nothing’s small!
No lily-muffled hum of a summer-bee,
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
No chaffinch, but implies the cherubim:
And, — glancing on my own thin, veined wrist, —
In such a little tremour of the blood
The whole strong clamour of a vehement soul
Doth utter itself distinct. Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries,
And daub their natural faces unaware
More and more, from the first similitude.
– Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), from Aurora Leigh: Book 7Revered for her verse, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) was a poet of such renown that she was considered for Poet Laureate on the death of Wordsworth in 1850. Though that post would go to Tennyson, the pause to consider her shows the critical esteem Elizabeth had already garnered. Robert Browning came to know Elizabeth’s poetry first and she his. There followed a courtship carried out in 575 letters exchanged across two years before the pair eloped. They moved to Italy, settling in Florence, where Elizabeth was the draw that brought a steady stream of readers from across Europe and the United States to their parlor. Their son, Robert, was born there in 1849.
We see her influence on the English poets of the 1800s in the reclusive Emily Dickinson keeping a framed portrait of Barret Browning in her bedroom in Amherst, Massachusetts. Dickinson’s life had been transformed by the poetry of ‘that Foreign Lady.’ Emily saw in Elizabeth a woman who proved what was possible to achieve through the power of the written word. Within her body of work, she addressed social injustices including child labor in mills and in mines throughout England, the slave trade, the confines life placed on women in society, the oppressive rule of Austria over the people of Italy.
Even Barrett Browning’s sacramental understanding of life was a natural part of who she was; it was part of the very essence of her life. She was the eldest of twelve children whose parents’ wealth came from the plantations they owned in Jamaica. Her mother died when she was about twenty two. She suffered from poor health most of her life—injuring her spine at fifteen, bursting a blood vessel in her chest that made her health even more fragile. Steeped in religion as people were at the time, she, like other writers and poets, often mentioned God in her works. In this excerpt from her verse novel Aurora Leigh, the poet offers these lines about the divine presence within creation.
• Have you ever ‘taken off your shoes’ because you were overwhelmed by the sacredness of something?
• Are you more taken by things naturally created like birds or flowers or do man-made creations like architecture, music, and art inspire you more?
Walking beneath a canopy of redwoods towering 300 feet above the trail puts oneself in perspective. Vastly larger and immensely older than the hikers they dwarf, the giant trees evoke a sense of wonder. We hiked under the evergreens along Prairie Creek Trail with a small group of family and friends in March 2023. The hike under the towering trunks and overhanging branches was like walking through a vast natural cathedral. We almost experienced awe fatigue as each turn in the trail revealed yet another breathtaking scene. And yet, that sense of reverence remained with every fresh vista.
The next day, the same group gathered under a redwood on another trail in Redwood National Park during a break in the nearly ever present rain. I officiated a simple Prayer Book service as our daughter, Griffin, and her husband, Chaz, were united in the sacrament of marriage. That evening, the thirteen of us present for the joyous occasion made tacos and fixings together and sat down to eat. Each of these three events–the walk beneath the redwoods, the wedding, and the meal–were uniquely moving experiences.
The two sacraments instituted by Jesus, baptism and Eucharist, are described in the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer together with the five additional sacramental rites of confirmation, ordination, holy matrimony, reconciliation of a penitent, and unction. Beyond these rites, we know that our experience of the divine is not limited to what happens in church. We can know the grace of the ordinary as we sometimes feel the presence of God, the Holy Trinity, in the mundane stuff of our daily life, as the whole creation is shot through with the presence of God.
The Russian Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote in For the Life of the World, “The world is a fallen world because it has fallen away from the awareness that God is all in all. The accumulation of this disregard for God is the original sin that blights the world.” Seeing that God is in all is one of the many places in which the churches of the east and west are united. The most amazing part of this is that it need not have been so. God did not need the creation, but chose to create the cosmos and everything in it, from the startlingly bright red eft newts I enjoy spotting on rainy hikes in the Great Smokies to the wildebeests I have watched migrate across the savanna in Tanzania. God did not need us or the redwoods or the vast nebulae in space and yet the Trinity of persons did create everything out of love for love, and the interconnections we share with one another and all creation are more important than what separates us.
The French Eastern Orthodox theologian Olivier Clément said, “True mysticism is to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary.” I have been aided in this by Dacher Keltner’s book Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life. His look at the science behind awe left me reflecting on the everyday experiences of wonder that we would do well to notice as they open us up to connections that matter. When you are in the presence of something vast that expands your understanding of the world, it takes your breath away. You are overwhelmed by a sense that there is more to life than seemed possible until that moment. For God is present in these everyday epiphanies. Keltner defines eight larger categories of experience that can generate awe: moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spiritual awe, life and death, and epiphanies.
The hike, wedding, and meal I began this reflection with combined the collective effervescence, which is how he describes a deep sense of a collective self experienced as “we” and “us” in the midst of nature in an experience that was spiritual. Small wonder that I found that event an everunfolding sense of wow. I didn’t cry, even though I am given to tears on occasion. But I was amazed at the sense that there is more to life than what we experience in most moments.
In making the faith of the church our own, we have not just the text of a book or the traditions of the church, but we too have experiences that there is something so much more than the rational mind can convey, expressing a truth of scope that is so much more than ordinary logic or reason. This is because we experience not just the natural world, in which we do see God, but we also have these transcendent experiences as well where it feels like the veil between heaven and earth is pulled back just a bit.
I will never get over our daughter, Griffin’s, birth at home with a midwife. It was, like most births, difficult and took many more hours than we wished, but it was beautiful in its own way as well, and I saw such strength in Victoria and vulnerability in our newborn girl. I thought there could be nothing more wonderful than Victoria and I looking into her eyes. Then in time as she came to know and love us, there was so much more. I sat with seven-year old Griffin on the edge of the Grand Canyon and felt the rush of the wind wash over us. And I have known the power of her forgiveness when I took a wrong turn in parenting. While my relationship with her is unique, I could name the many other ways in which I have experienced that something more in so many relationships.
These experiences connect us to each other even as they connect us with the divine. The Holy Trinity is the transcendent one, present in all creation and also breaking into creation taking our breath away with moments that reveal that there is more to life than seemed possible until that epiphany. These are glimpses at a creation packed with the presence of the creator.
• When have you experienced a sense of collective, a we or us, that felt like something so much more?
• What takes your breath away? When have you known a little epiphany?
“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:16-20)
This passage of Scripture, which concludes the Gospel of Matthew, resonates particularly to those called to Holy Orders. But were the eleven disciples the only ones on that mountain, or did the risen Jesus, as in life, draw a crowd? Whether it was 11 or 1,111, Jesus was urging all of his followers to fulfill this mission. This is not something for deacons, priests, and bishops alone, but for each of us who follow Jesus. Neither a great suggestion nor a simple invitation, in the Great Commission Jesus charges those who follow Him to take the Good News to the ends of the earth. “Go,” Jesus tells us.
Yet, we can never give away what we don’t possess ourselves. To make disciples, we have to be disciples. We can look to what Jesus taught about his expectation for those who followed him. Here are a handful of examples from the Gospels of Luke and John:
Jesus talks of the cost of discipleship in the 14th chapter of Luke’s Gospel as he teaches that disciples are to have a holy detachment, not placing our essential hope or trust in anyone or anything other than God. He put this in a jarring way, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). He added that we are also to die to ourselves saying, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:27). Jesus then added the things we own to the equation, “So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (Luke 14:33). The warning here is that if we put people or things ahead of him, we are making them into idols.
Jesus’ friend John recorded how we must come to know and follow his teaching and all of scripture. “Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples,’” (John 8:31). Jesus called us to the same self-giving love he demonstrated as he talked to his disciples on the night before he died, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35). Jesus asks us to love others with the same unconditional love he freely offers us. On that same night, Jesus told his followers, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (John 15:7-8).
Paul listed the fruit of the Spirit to the Christians in Galatia as, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23). In calling us to bear much fruit as his disciples, Jesus is naming those qualities that we are to have and to offer to others as we make disciples.
• Some of the disciples doubted. You may have doubts and fears too. Can you be open with the Lord about them?
• What do you do to make the love of God present and real to those you meet?
Many peoples around the world have developed rituals that instill within the child the importance of comingof-age or the religion into which they were born that are very different from our practices of baptism and confirmation.
Among the Sateré-Mawé people, indigenous to the Brazilian state of Amazonas, boys endure an initiation with bullet ants to mark their coming of age at 13. The boys search the jungle for bullet ants which are then sedated by an adult who submerges them in an herbal solution that anesthetizes them. The ants are then woven into mittens fashioned from leaves with the ants’ stingers pointed inwards. As the ants wake up about an hour later, the initiation begins. Each boy must wear the ant gloves for ten full minutes as the angry ants inject him with neurotoxins. Justin Schmidt, who created a sting pain index, says that while the bullet ant sting is never fatal, it creates what he calls, “Pure, intense, brilliant pain.” The intense pain lasts from 12-36 hours, giving the initiates ample opportunity to show they are ready for manhood. But the test is not a one time rite of passage as each teen endures this process about twenty times over the course of several months to complete the initiation.
In Malaysia, Muslim girls celebrate Khatam Al Koran on their eleventh birthday. This day is marked by a ritual that demonstrates their progress in learning to read and recite the Koran in a rite they have been preparing for since the age of four. Like Jewish children with a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, the girls study the Koran so that they can recite the final chapter of the sacred text in their local Mosque.
There is a custom among the Osage people that instills a child with the sacramentality of the world. When a child is born, a holy person is summoned to recite to the newborn infant the story of the creation of the world and of the animals that walk this planet. This is the very first act and must be completed before the baby is allowed to nurse. When the child is weaned from their mother’s breast, a holy person is once again called for. This time, they tell the child a creation story that culminates in the sacred origins of water. Only then is the child given water to drink. Finally, as the child is ready to consume solid food, the process repeats with the holy person telling the origins of the grain and other food they will eat. The object of all of this is to introduce the maturing child to the sacramental reality of the world. This child grows up knowing that eating is a sacred act that connects us to creation as well as a physiological act.
These initiation rites of other cultures show a common human longing to mark important transitions in life, often in ways in which we prove ourselves worthy of the community. Our initiation rites are impoverished by comparison, largely as we have come to teach the faith increasingly less and less. The stories of the Bible are no longer common knowledge. As noted in the introduction, early Christianity involved steps taken to make sure that converts were truly devoted to Christ. Once Christians stopped meeting in private homes and synagogues and had their own buildings to worship in, about the third century, all transgressions were confessed before the congregation. The bishop would then apply different levels of temporary excommunication for each offense. Those undergoing penance were relegated to the vestibule. If they were still penitent, they would then be allowed to stand with the catechumens before they were once again admitted to the main body of the congregation, and finally restored to full communion.
The penitential process could take up to twenty years in the case of serious offenses. Some offenses were considered so serious that the person was permanently expelled from the church for life and only allowed to receive communion on their deathbeds. The excommunicated were known as ‘weepers’ and they were allowed to remain on the front steps of the church during the liturgy so that they could beg for the prayers of the faithful entering and leaving the building.
Also, for a very long time because of the fear of persecution, only baptized Christians in good standing were allowed to remain throughout the service. Non-Christians were escorted from the building after the Great Litany, and catechumens were escorted out before the consecration of the Eucharist.
It could also take anywhere from nine months to three years to convert to Christianity. While awaiting baptism, which was always deferred until Easter, one was designated a catechumen and had only limited access to the Scriptures or the Divine Liturgy. Only the baptized could read or hear the Gospels. Most of us are probably glad that we aren’t forced to demonstrate that level of devotion anymore. And within the boundless grace of God we know that we do not have to prove ourselves worthy. Rather, we are to embrace the mercy of the God who loves us and wants better for us than the mess we humans can make of our lives. In capturing a new sense of sacramentality, God’s presence all around us seeking to break through and reveal God’s love for us, we can come to see how God loves us despite the ways we fall short.
In his book Immortal Diamond, Richard Rohr has an interesting suggestion: “Many Christians begin Lent on Ash Wednesday with the signing of ashes on their forehead and the words from Genesis 3:19,” he says, but continues, “which is just the first shocking part of the message: “Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.”
He says that we need to close the circle on Easter. “But then we should be anointed (‘Christed’) with holy oil on Easter morning with the other half of the message: “Love is always stronger than death, and unto that love you have now returned.”
• Though greatly varied, what are the benefits of rites of passage? Why might cultures create such unique ways to initiate someone?
• Can you think of any ways that we can make sacramentality an active part of our church life?
• Pick one thing for the coming week that you can focus on being a visible sign of an invisible reality, and if you like, journal on how you see its connection to God.