While music has grown in technique and complexity since then, even the greatest composers of past 500 years haven’t been able to surpass the sheer musical loveliness of the works of polyphonic composers such as Victoria, Tallis, Byrd, and Palestrina.

“. . . the monks had Christ living and working in them by faith, by charity. The monks were united by the Holy Spirit in the peace of God . . . But the Icarians were united only by the frail bonds of an “armed neutrality” of insatiable animal appetites.”

Consider this analogy. You open your door one night to let in your cat, and along with him come half a dozen rabid raccoons.  And maybe the cat doesn’t get in after all. In any case, you didn’t intend to let in the raccoons, but there they are, snarling at you and eating the upholstery off your furniture. When he called for the Second Vatican Council Pope John XXIII said that the time had come to “open the windows of the Church to let in fresh air.” The problem is that the rabid raccoons known as the Spirit of Vatican II came with it, intended or not.  You can’t separate the two.

We tend not to associate the word “hallelujah” with those penitential seasons. In Christ on the Mount of Olives it signifies the climactic moment when Christ says, “Not my will, but ours, be done” (Luke 22:42). This is when he commits himself to his passion and death on the cross. That, in turn, will lead directly to the triumph of Easter. Now that calls for a “Hallelujah!”

That is not to say that we discount the possibility of miraculous intervention (see below). But our prayers in response to human tragedies, for the most part, address things that are beyond the reach of any laws or “systematic approaches” we can enact in this world.

The Protestant Reformation became a permanent feature of religious life in Europe. It might otherwise have remained a largely German affair. In later years, the growth of the British Empire ensured that the split in the Latin Church spread over the whole globe.

 This lovely piece of music is a little like the Treasure Hidden in a Field form Jesus’ parable (see Matthew 13:44) . . . It’s a nice reminder that grace breaks through even in the ugliest of circumstances.  

Christ is Risen indeed.
And what could be more fitting this day than the joyous Easter hymn, “Jesus Christ is Risen Today”? T