This is evidently an allusion to the resurrection story where Mary Magdalene is seeking the Lord among the dead and hears from the angel words that he is not here, he is risen. I don't think this was said of Mary Magdalene, it was said by the angel to the three women coming to the sepulchre. Now the text continues. Seek for him in the house of mercy. There the souls of the departed gather, because there is the place where life is to be had to strengthen them. Here one keeps their memory and their names in the big book of God in which they are all contained. Here the blood of the crucified pours resurrection upon their souls and gives them the strength to come to him.

[01:04]

The priest approaches the altar for the souls of the deceased and puts bread and wine upon the altar. He renews the memorial of the death of Jesus and of his resurrection. and he calls all the deceased to be present at the sacrifice that they may receive forgiveness. For all the deceased he offers the gifts and calls upon the Father by calling to mind the death of the Son. With this sacrifice the priest sanctifies the deceased because it has in itself the power to conquer death. The odor of life, which emanates from the holy sacrifice, draws the souls, they gather, they come to be expiated, and the deceased breathe in the resurrection, which the body of the Son of God exhales. This beautiful faith, which is expressed here in the words of a Syrian Christian poet,

[02:13]

expresses a common conviction in the Church, and that is that at the singing of the Sanctus, where we unite our voices with those of the angels and of the glorified saints, they are also the souls of the deceased, are allowed to become present around the altar, and that they join there, the priests, and join the congregation in the offering of that death which infallibly leads into life. I mean the death of our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, that blessed, life-giving suffering. From all that has been said, we see clearly that the celebration of the church year is not only a way but is already fruition.

[03:20]

It is a sacred play in which and through which we enter into the glory of God, in which we share already in that eternal blessedness which once will be ours in the full manifestation on the last day. And in this way, the ecclesiastical year inspires into our hearts here on earth that strength and that joy which we are able to conquer the world. Therefore, let all those who understand this aspect of the ecclesiastical year hear the admonition which St. Paul, at the end of his epistle to the Hebrews, addresses to us out of the same spirit. He says, let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the origin and the crown of all faith,

[04:27]

who to win his prize of blessedness endured the cross and made light of its shame. Jesus, who now sits on the right of God's throne, take your standard from him, from his endurance, and you will not grow faint, you will not find your souls unmanned. Come then, stiffen the sinews of drooping hand and flagging knee, and plant your footprints in a straight track, so that the man who goes lame may not stumble out of the path, but regain strength instead. Your aim must be peace with all men, and that holiness without which no one will ever see God. Take good care that none of you is false to God's grace. The kingdom we have inherited is one which cannot be shaken. In gratitude for this, let us worship God as He would have us worship Him, in awe and reverence.

[05:34]

No doubt of it, our God is a consuming fire. Evidently, this thing still needs a thorough going over. And I have at the moment, I don't have the spark, you know, that I had when I delivered this thing at Cincinnati. Now there's one thing that you may still take down and type, and that is a poem which I might use in the beginning. by a poem by Gertrude von Lepore, capital L-E, capital F-O-R-T, Hymns to the Church, translated to English by Margaret Chandler.

[06:45]

And this poem is called The Holy Year. And it runs this way. Your voice speaks. Bow down, O years, and stand still, ye months. Take the shoes off from off your feet, ye wandering days. Exclamation mark. And the new... For eternity, capital E, eternity is speaking to my soul. Behold, there is too much today upon this earth. Today is written with a capital T. There is too much passing on among the children of men.

[07:51]

Period. New line. You shall open me as you would open a door. Semicolon. You shall break through my white seals as though they were a light partition. Period. A new line. For I am close as a whisper in the ear. Semicolon. Only the space of a love and I break in. Period. New line. You have but to kneel and I hold you in my arms. Colon. Tremble all you who pass. Period. See, I will come down to you out of the heavens. I will become the word of the uncreated, wrapped in the veils of poetry time.

[09:02]

Period. Time is written here with a capital, a new line. I will no more be called eternity, comma. I will take the name of your bells, comma. They shall ring me as they ring the angelus. I will wander through the seasons of men like the great holidays of faith, comma. I will rise like a Christmas constellation over the hours of mankind. Period. New line. They shall hail me. Peace, peace on earth. Exclamation mark. They shall sing me as they sing hallelujah. Exclamation mark. They shall bless me as the light on Easter morning.

[10:05]

They shall rejoice in me as the holy year of the Lord. It is the common characteristic of the various kinds of feasts, that man frees himself or disentangles himself from his usual activities in order to give room to a higher, more satisfying or more free sentiments. The everyday life with its depressing monotony, with its care and worries for material needs, with his sweat and toil is left behind.

[11:12]

Man breathes more freely and he tries the wings of a and he tries the wings of his mind in a way which gives him satisfaction and pleasure. The essence of this pleasure does not consist in the lack of work or in the fact that he does not work, but in a higher activity, which is, as it were, freed from the curse of work, because it is free of labor, it is not laborious.

[12:15]

The otium, O-T-I-U-M, is not idleness, idleness. but it is the free activity of the spirit in a higher realm of intensified experience of life. On a feast day, Man loves to cultivate or to give himself to play in its lower and higher forms. The play which does not have a utilitarian purpose

[13:24]

but still has a meaning. In the lower forms of play, man activates or betätigt in a pleasant way his bodily energies. In the higher kinds of play, He sinks, as it were, into the depth of this world. He mirrors the mysteries of the cosmos and of the souls. In this way, the feast becomes to man the day in which he concentrates, in which he recollects himself and concentrates himself the higher aims and ideas of life.

[14:33]

It is an opportunity to turn away the eyes from passing things to the remaining eternal good. A reflection of the eternal fills the soul with Feiertagsstimmung, with the festive mood. Out of the intensified Lebensgefühl, experience of life, and the versenkung and the concentration rises joy. Festivitas originally means joyfulness. The new energy or the new power which is gained in the celebration of a feast day

[15:41]

also transforms the everyday life. The work receives new incentives from the festive joyfulness and also from the joyful expectation of another feast. In this way, the feast in the higher sense of the word has also a practical nutzen, usefulness. All feasts have their roots in religion, and the religious feast is the highest of its kind.

[16:46]

The object of the feast, in a sense, is the divinity. The one who celebrates a religious feast not only intensifies his material, Lebensgenuss, a pleasure which he finds in life, and not only his intellectual, aesthetical and moral attitudes, but his religious, divinely originated energies. The feast becomes an expression and is also a source of divine life in the soul. It is characteristic for the celebration of religious feast that the divine life is in some way or other drawn into

[18:00]

the circle of those who celebrate the feast. It is not only a mere memorial, but it is a presence. Divinity becomes present in the festive raigen or dance, what is that, becomes manifest in its effects, The richly developed religious terminology of Hellenism calls this a cultic epiphany or manifestation. God appears among his worshippers. One has called him. by saying, hear us, come, show yourself, be present.

[19:10]

And he came, he showed himself, he manifested himself, he is there. But he is not only present, but his coming has the meaning to help To act and to conquer as he acted during his first epiphany. Suffering, conquering, suffering, fighting, conquering. but His devotees act with Him. They act as those among whom God is present.

[20:14]

Their actions become a holy imitation of the divine deeds. They become a sacred action. And in this way, the actors take a share in the divine life. Here also, therefore, we have a play, but a play of infinitely deeper vitality than we saw it before. The play now becomes a mysterium. Divine presence is acted in symbolic form. In this way, the religious celebration culminates in a liturgy.

[21:21]

The sacred feast has therefore a completely different content than the profane feast or the worldly feast. It gives, as the former, the joyful intensification of love. The sacred feast differs from the profane one in contents and in kind. It gives also intensification of life and joy. and a pleasant or satisfying activity.

[22:26]

But the life here is divine life. The activity is the sacred liturgical action or play. The divine spirit manifests its fullness and eternity descends to short-lived man. These characteristic elements are in the deepest and truest way realized in the Christian festal celebration. The essential characteristic of a Christian feast is the epiphania, the manifestation of

[23:39]

the divine, a manifestation of divine power and grace with the purpose of communicating itself to those who celebrate this feast. to give supernatural life to men. The Epiphania is acted in sacred symbolic action. keep in faith, St. Ambrose says of the celebration of the Easter light, that the Lord Jesus, called by the prayers of the priests, is really present, because he has said, where two or three are gathered together in my name,

[25:03]

the I am in their midst. How much more, then, will he give his presence there where the church is, where his mysteries are? The liturgy, therefore, is an external ritual celebration which represents

[25:33]

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