Footnote from the Borderlands: On Three Ancient Feasts

There is a deep imperial purple thread of three Feasts that run through the patterns of the Church’s liturgical year. The Feasts of the Epiphany, the Transfiguration and the Ascension define the life of the Church. Through them we learn what the Incarnation looks, feels, and smells like.

The Feast of the Epiphany unpacks the theology of Christmas. The Feast of the Transfiguration grapples with the pain of Holy Week. (The contemporary Church has repackaged this as a pain free story, and in so doing has failed to understand it). The Feast of the Ascension explores the mystery of God, the realisation that the humanity of Christ changes heaven, and addresses the vexed structural issue of the ancient narratorial task of disposing of the body.

These three Feasts are hinged: they gift us a Triptych in which we live in the mystery and explore the warp and the woof of the Eucharist, the Incarnation, and the Holy and Undivided Trinity.

 

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© Lottie E. Allen

September

In the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty