All Saints Eve and/or Reformation Day

Thanks again to the folks at Friends at the Advent for the repeat invitation. It was really cool to preach in the midst of a Solemn High Mass at a place to which, years before I even went to seminary, I was sneaking down to go to Solemn High Mass. As for the sermon, instead of quoting U2 I ended up quoting both Betty Bowers and Dom Jean Baptiste Chautard.

I went up to Boston early and saw Luther, which was surprisingly good and made me get teary-eyed about the Word of God. It was also a fun history review, making me remember all kinds of things from school: oh, yeah, Prince Frederick... Staupitz.... the Peasants' Rebellion.... and later I remembered, oh, yeah, Luther's hilariously titled book Against the Murdering Thieving Hordes of Peasants.

But they skipped some of the, you know, off-putting, religious parts of the story. So we didn't get "The righteous shall live by faith" or "I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates." Thus we never really heard what Luther's brilliant, earthshaking insight about justification actually was, which is a shame. Still: much better than it could have been.