Bitterly cold evening in the city. He tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, but those of us with a coat or two are thought to be capable of rising to the occasion. Which was eventually the case. But it took some time before the shift from 'wow, this is difficult' to 'I will prevail, come what may.'
"If the river has to be crossed, it doesn't matter if the water is warm or cold." (Teilhard du Chardin, SJ)
At morning Mass -- καιροσ -- I'm sure it's occurred to everyone else in the Christian world, and I'm just late to the table, but the sacrifice of material food that becomes a living form precisely reverses the act of sacrifice that takes a living form and changes it to material food. A response to sacrifice itself -- closing the door.
Yesterday, the pontifical, as usual when I'm in the city, and then evening Mass at the west side parish, which has a fair national profile as a progressive church. I realized with some dismay as the services progressed that neither faction of the church has retained a vocabulary that opens the Grail. And they're in utter conflict politically. Colossal new murals in the cathedral of local police, ambulance staff, and firefighters, commingling with angels. In scale, outpaces not merely any other decoration, but also runs rampant over the architecture. I remember a few rectors ago, there was a reaction against the (quite good) slightly abstract bas-reliefs of E.A. Seton and one other figure, which were removed, and the rector put in a porcelain Italian-bespoke liturgical realism bas-relief which (fortunately) vanished soon later. That was the same push that replaced the booklets with missals (the one now used), but didn't calculate the depth of the missal brackets on the pews. "Which one of you would attempt to conquer a kingdom without sitting down to count the cost..."