Dear friends,
With stewardship season upon us, and planning nearing readiness for Advent and Christmas, we are entering the annual repetition of patterns and celebrations by which the church both secures its near-term material future and is reintroduced to the mystery of the Word made flesh. The church is no stranger to repetition: seasonally through the year, across the days of the week, even through the hours of the day, we inhabit a series of intertwining cycles of prayer and memory by which we live into the imitation of Christ.
At the end of the year, though, the stress and busyness of everything else can tempt us into thinking these cycles and seasons are just one more “add-on,” a bit of spiritual flavoring, that we can set aside or leave out as needed. And of course regular rest and refreshment is essential for us to function at our best. But the Gospel is not just a religious truth, and the life it commends amounts to more than a spiritual hobby. As theologian Herbert McCabe articulated years ago, the Gospel is not religious but cosmic, it changes something about the world, whether we believe in it or not. One of the things that means for us is that the parish church, our primary home as Christians, is firmly planted in something more lasting, more deeply true, than traffic, taxes, or even death. Our participation here amounts to a sustained effort at living according to a different vision, one which precedes, underlies, and waits at the end of all our other wanderings.
As the joyful busyness of the holidays begins to loom, I invite you to find here at Saint Mark’s not just “one more thing,” but the place where all the other things can come to rest, held by the One who makes out of so many dissonant harmonies a single music of love.
Yours faithfully,
Fr. Sawicky
Liturgical calendar for Ravenna
Italy, Milan, 1386