Every year, and this year included, we have a nice outside fire to bless at the Great Vigil of Easter!
The fire is blazing, the wind is blowing and all I can think of is, “O God, don’t let my polyester blend vestments catch on fire and melt on my skin!”
But, worse than that in the liturgical realm, is the fact that while we get a good blazing fire and I offer the solemn blessing of that fire and then bless the new Paschal Candle, when I go and bend down to use a taper to light from the newly blessed fire, the flame dances around the taper and melts it in the process but always somehow by the grace of God it will light and I can light the Easter candle with the blessed fire.
BUT NOT THIS YEAR! The fire danced around the taper, melted it until it was no more! And then one of our adult servers pulled out his handy dandy Bic lighter and that did the trick!
But the fire on the candle was not the blessed FIRE, JUST A PAGAN FIRE!
OH! THE HUMANITY AND DIVINITY OF IT ALL!
At our Cathedral Basilica, my bishop’s fire was smaller than ours and he is closer to it than I would dare go? Did his wax candle, rather than a taper, actually work, or was the Bic lighter edited out of the photo fest?
12 comments:
Is that the Cathedral "fire"? Well....
I have discovered that taking a burning twig (dry pine twigs work well) from the fire and using it to light the Paschal candle works best for me.
Like you, I have not had good experiences with wax tapers in the past. However, wooden tapers are available and they work without a problem. I also have a MC light the wooden taper and bring it to me. It always seems to be windy at the Easter Vigil.
If you have a large fire rake some coals to the edge and use them. Then you aren’t in as much heat.
Strictly speaking, fire should be struck from a flint to light the Paschal conflagration. Since few people have a tinder-box to hand, a Zippo lighter will suffice admirably.
Split "fat lightered" pine long tapers.
GA Rep "Rev" Warnock lit a fire which still has yet to go out, showing he missed his call as a Jesuit. He had to pull down a tweet Easter Sunday. "The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ," the senior pastor of New Ebenezer Baptist Church's account said. "Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves."
For those who have forgotten or never knew their roots, the lighter/fat lightered wood is the resin impregnated heartwood of the pine, often in evidence on downed trees and brush piles awaiting removal (it's free), lasts forever, burns like a torch, and smells wonderful while burning.
Many older houses in the south contructed entirely of the stuff due to termite resistance, so old house remodeling trash piles also a free source. Getcha sum.
Split and put in a brass container or vase it will always be ready, and meanwhils impart a lovely scent to the sacristy.
Over 1500 years of practice and best you guys can do is storebought wax tapers, a happenstance dried twig (if it did not rain), and Bic lighters, and general winging-it the order of the day, despite rain and wind a fairly common natural happening. It is ONLY the holiest night of the year and one would think you folk had it down by now without resorting to charcoal lighter fluid and Bic lighters.
For starting, there are industrial torch flint/steel starters and flint/steel camping fire starters. Also cotton balls (can saturate with petroleum jelly), and it would help if folk made wood shavings/small tinder/twigs supply as well as quickly igniting dried heartwood pine supply something done well beforehand. A plan for wind shielding, even, would be nice.
Instead, generally, THE Easter miracle in most parishes is if the fire and candle can be started without a hitch and without resorting to CLICKCLICKCLICK Bics for the new fire or even altar candles. A very large proportion of times, the rite as executed is a nerve jangling embarrassment. Just a view from a guy in a pew.
The twig I used was not of the "happenstance" variety.
Those of us who were Boy Scouts, and many others who are not dimwits as too many guys in the pews may wrongly surmise, did a little "Squaw Wood" collecting in the dry weather, setting aside the combustibles for use in the Easter Fire.
Fat lighter, which I know well from my Boy Scout days, can burn for longer than is necessary to set alight the other twigs and smaller pieces of dry wood in the Easter fire. It works well in an indoor fireplace where one wants a "starter" to burn long enough to set alight the larger logs, split or unsplit, that have been laid on.
The fire here started withour a hitch, despite the gentle, gnat-banishing (Thanks be to God) breeze.
Just a view from one of the guys who sits in the Presider's Chair.
(Maybe next a "viewer" will suggest we bum a light from the torches that get their start from the sun in Olympia on the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece.)
Ah, but Father Ted, you know as well as I that so many times there is no prep. Instead, we are treated to a portable cheap barbeque grill base, and a pile of lumber reeking of charcoal lighter fluid, lit with a long Bic lighter, such holy symbolism from the KOC grill master often in charge of the fire.
Everyone claims they wish parishoners to take these rites seriously, and then it patently obvious the celebrants do not. Even a wind screen as easy as a new white sheet rolled and stapled to a couple of broomsticks to block from prevailing wind direction type forethought or care never in evidence. What is in evidence is slipshod modern cheap convenience and compromise, and then folk wonder why pew sitters tend that way in all things.
The early celebrations in Jerusalem as recorded featured torches and fires, and Constantine banished night in his new capitol on that most glorious of nights, and no need to go to Mt Olympus.
What a very interesting discussion thread!
I am NOT at all being sarcastic.
Very interesting and very revealing!
My first pastor as a priest used to stick the Easter Candle itself right into the fire (and it was a BIG fire), until it lit. The top would be kind of scorched, but he didn't care, and after all, the candle was going to burn down over the next few hours and days anyway.
I don't do that; but somehow we manage.
Maybe the congregants of the "reverend" Warnock's church should sue him for spiritual malpractice. Like if John Lewis were still here. Lewis liked to champion himself as a civil rights advocate, but he never advocated for the civil rights of the unborn, unfortunately being a reliable pro-abortion congressman for 33 years. Do you think Lewis would have had such a record if Warnock had spent a few Sundays a year preaching against abortion, which kills far more blacks than guns do? I would like to know where in his Bible he finds support for the "right to choose."? Maybe someone could go back thru his videotaped sermons and hear if he ever preached against abortion, and same-sex "marriage" for that matter. Not holding my breath that we will find he ever did, judging by the way he votes in DC these days!
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