A new springtime? →

In a radio broadcast in 1969, Father Joseph Ratzinger famously declared that “from the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning.”

The future Cardinal Ratzinger obviously did not have the COVID-19 pandemic in mind when he wrote these words. In fact, he was discussing what he thought the Catholic Church would look like in the year 2000 — 31 years later, and five years before he would take the name Pope Benedict XVI.

Yet here in 2020, his words seem prophetic, in the original sense of the term.

This is the feast →

Here in northeastern Indiana, it’s rather gray and windy for Easter Monday, but we won’t let the weather dampen our spirits. Easter isn’t past — it’s present, and we will be celebrating especially during the octave, which ends with Divine Mercy Sunday, but also all the way through Ascension Thursday to Pentecost Sunday, when the 50 days of Easter finally draw to a close.

Yesterday, as on every Easter Sunday, I reread St. John Chrysostom’s Easter homily. When your spirits need a lift during this Easter season, it’s better than another Cadbury Creme Egg. I’ve always found it comforting during those years when my Lenten observance was frustrated (or frustrating), and this year — for many of us, perhaps the most frustrating Lent of our lives — is no exception.

Christ is risen! →

I rarely disagreed with the Catholic historian John Lukacs, my mentor and friend for a quarter of a century until his death during the Easter season a year ago. One thing we never saw eye to eye on, though, was the celebration of Easter in the Eastern Church. John preferred the reverence and beauty of the Easter liturgies of the West, which I love as well. But at Easter celebrations in Byzantine churches, I have also quite happily been swept away in what John called the orgiastic shouts of “Christ is risen! Indeed he is risen!”

Awake, O sleeper →

One of the more moving Good Friday devotions is the practice in the Eastern Church of venerating Jesus in his tomb. On the evening of Good Friday, an icon of the body of Christ, printed on or woven into cloth, is placed at the front of the church, and the faithful crawl on their knees from the entrance to the icon to venerate the shroud.

The shroud remains entombed through the night, surrounded by candles, as Jesus sleeps in the tomb, awaiting his resurrection on Easter morn.

And yet …

It is finished →

Four weeks ago, when I wrote the first of these “From the Chapel” posts, all of the office workers at OSV had transitioned to working from home, and Mass had come to an end in our chapel. Ten days later, when we decided to close the rest of the facility temporarily, Msgr. Campion removed the host from the tabernacle, and I extinguished the sanctuary light. The chapel has been dark, and the tabernacle empty, ever since.

Today, on Good Friday, Catholic churches around the world have joined our little chapel. In a normal year, the absence of his presence, indicated by the lack of that flickering flame, cuts deep. This year, it is almost unbearably heartbreaking.