Templar Edification

Each year on the sixth Sunday of Easter, following the Divine Liturgy, I gather together at the main door of our church with a modest group of congregants bearing both hymnals and brooms. With the Crucifer before us, we perambulate about the borders of the parish property, “beating the bounds” with the brooms and reciting the Litany of the Saints in call-and-response. In recent years I’ve included a child with a smartphone so as to livestream the procession, thus answering the call to “keep Church weird.” The term Rogation derives from the Latin rogare, meaning “to ask.” Rogation Days are traditional times of fasting and prayer for God’s blessing in agriculture, and for divine protection against natural disasters. We want an amicable environment, not an angry one, as a happy harvest is our goal. The Western Church observes several Rogation Days. Major Rogation falls on 25 April, a time when the old pagan Romans used to sacrifice a dog to Rogibus, their deity of agricultural disease. Th...

May to me is without question the most beautiful month of the year. Growing up in Pennsylvania, autumn had always been my favorite season, yet since settling in Minnesota I’ve developed a new appreciation for spring—which doesn’t hit until May. Away recedes the ice and snow after six long months of winter, and up pop the sights and sounds and smells of fresh new life, new growth, new warmth. It is simply lovely. One of the themes to which I have often returned during my year as Grand Prelate has been to debunk the popular notion that Christian holidays are secretly pagan in origin. Halloween, Christmas, and Easter regularly come under fire as the year rolls ‘round, and I find myself pointing out that Christian observances are overwhelmingly Jewish in their origins, as well befits a religion centered upon worshipping a rabbi as our God. Besides all that, “pagan,” as G.K. Chesterton memorably wrote, is really just another word for human. Seasonal celebrations around the world share simil...

For most folks, Easter lasts but a day: a morning of formal worship followed by an afternoon family feast. But in point of fact, Easter is an entire season on the calendar of the Church, one that lasts a full 50 days, beyond the Ascension to Pentecost. I’m not above using this to my clerical advantage, as I may have been known to introduce liturgical modifications with the assurance that it would “only be for Easter.” Muahaha. It is a remarkable claim of the Christian community not simply that Jesus rose from the dead but that He then continued to appear to individuals, groups, and significant crowds for 40 days following His death and Resurrection. As I’ve pointed out before, both at Candlemas and Lent, 40 holds symbolic importance in the Bible, as ancient peoples knew that it takes roughly 40 weeks for a pregnant woman to come to term. It is a number indicating new life, new birth. The nature of these Resurrection appearances proves no less remarkable. Jesus’ conquest of death soars ...