Found Objects

Here is a very clear article about the date of Easter. It’s in French; I intend to translate it, but first into Dutch for the benefit of people in the parish. If you want a copy of the Dutch translation too, please tell me! Comments ought to work now.

We seem to have a (literally) astronomical error this year: if Easter had been calculated completely properly it would have been on the 6th of May.

This is the beginning of the prayer before Communion:

I believe, O Lord, and I confess, that thou art truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, who didst come into the world to save sinners, of whom I am first.

I’ve always felt a little uneasy about that. I have a tendency to be overly contrite anyway, which is the reason that for several years I didn’t go to explicitly penitential servies at all: if I did go to one, it left me in a blue funk for days. I can handle that now, but the words still sting, every Liturgy, when I say that prayer.

But today I realised, not for the first time but I haven’t been able to put it into words before, that “sinners, of whom I am first” is to be taken literally. Not “first” as in “first among the Apostles” like Saints Peter and Paul, or “first among bishops” like the Archbishop of Constantinople, but the first sinner I encounter when I look around me.

And then, of course, I don’t have to look any further. Other people’s sins aren’t my responsibility. Of course, when an action of mine makes someone sin, that is my responsibility, but only my own action, not theirs.

I can imagine —I know, in fact— that there are sins much worse than mine; for instance, I’ve never murdered anyone. But that’s none of my business. My piffling sins may not be significant in the large picture but they do stand between me and God, which is what matters and what needs to be cleared up.