The Service of Light

Five weeks from today I will lock the door of my Galway apartment for the last time.  After saying a fond farewell to the docks, the marina, the harbor and the bay, I will climb aboard a bus bound for Dublin.  The next day I will leave Ireland and, late that night, I will be home in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

These next five weeks will be quite full and I am sure they will pass quickly.  Week four, my Aunt Shirley and my cousin, Denise, arrive in Ireland for a visit and week five I address all departure details (e.g. closing my bank account and donating my household items). 

I have three weeks left to work on my sabbatical project.  My goal is to finish a draft of my book along with one rigorous self-edit.  I can do it.  As I approach this goal I am both excited and weary.  It’s been a long journey. 

For those of you who might not know, I am writing about Roman Catholic Church reform in the diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska.  I focus on two organizations, Catholics for Active Liturgical Life and Call To Action Nebraska.  In 1996 the bishop of Lincoln, Fabian Bruskewitz, excommunicated the members of twelve different organizations, including Call To Action and Call To Action Nebraska.  I am a member of both.  If I lived any place else in the world beside the diocese of Lincoln, I would be a member of the church in good standing.  Though I choose not to recognize the excommunication as valid, it has impacted my life. 

Yesterday, Holy Saturday, I finished going through the last of four binders of documentary data.  I wrote about a number of things, including the fact that in October 2009, I received a letter from my pastor in Lincoln who told me that he was removing me from parish membership because of my involvement in Call To Action.  He asked me to meet with him.  I did.  At that meeting he told me he was instructed by the bishop to deny me communion.  This is not an easy thing to have happen and it wasn’t an easy thing to write about. 

I went to my favorite liturgy of the year, the Easter Vigil, last night, with that event on my mind.  I arrived early and was pleased to see that my favorite spot was unoccupied.  Just as I started to sit down, Fr. Dick said from across the church, “Oh, Rachel.  Come here.”  He asked a young woman, Ella, and me to participate in the liturgy by carrying lanterns during the part of the liturgy called the Service of Light.  We processed, carrying lit lanterns, to the altar from opposite sides of the church where two other people dressed the altar.  We then processed outside where Fr. Dick lit the Easter fire, blessed it and lit the Easter candle.

After spending the day thinking about getting, quite literally, expelled from the church in Lincoln, this small event held great significance to me.  It felt wonderful to be counted on to help out when a need arose.  Fr. Dick knows about my situation and that didn’t stop him from including me. 

The Service of the Light, it seems, did me a service as well. 

So high were my Easter spirits that I returned to St. Augustine’s for the 11:00 AM mass today.  The church smelled like fresh flowers and the choir was in fine form. 

After mass and the post-mass coffee/tea/biscuit/conversation gathering (at which I told Fr. Dick what I wrote about above), I had a lovely lunch at a Thai restaurant near my apartment.  I then went for a stroll in the sunshine. 

                        Accept this Easter candle,

                        a flame divided but undimmed,

                        a pillar of fire that glows to the honor of God.

                        Let it mingle with the lights of heaven

                        and continue bravely burning

                        to dispel the darkness of this night!

                                                -From the Exsultet, chanted at the Easter Vigil

Easter flowers from Mom and Dad