Last week we watched portions of a two-part series on PBS called Dante: Inferno to Paradise. As the title suggests, this was about Italian Dante Alighieri, the late 13th and early 14th century poet whose monumental work has endured to this day as a classic of world literature.
Dante was from Florence but spent years in exile and during that time he longed for home. He felt his displacement keenly during Holy Week and Easter with the rituals focussed around the Baptistery with it's bronze Gates of Paradise doors and soaring mosaic ceiling. I've visited this place of worship and it is awe-inspiring.
Florence Baptistery
The documentary mentioned that on this day, Holy Saturday, a fire would be kindled at night in the midst of the Baptistery and families would send representatives with containers to take away coals to light fires within their own homes. This ritual continues to the present, although outside the building.
This brought to mind Holy Saturday last year, our first day of more than two weeks in Israel with Ruth's sister and brother-in-law. We were in Jerusalem and I gently convinced these evangelicals to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where the holy fire is kindled each year. While we didn't witness this ceremony we listened to a choir of monks chanting in an other-worldly welcome of Easter. It was a somewhat chaotic yet moving time.
Protestants don't usually give much attention to this day between Good Friday and Easter but for several years while in Sudbury a number of congregations came together for an Easter Vigil. We lit our own fire on the street outside St. Andrew's UC in what we irreverently termed the "holy hibachi," keeping the fire alive until the next morning when it was processed in to the sanctuary as the Christ Candle. Our son Isaac, now a United Church ministry, was baptised at one of those vigils as the age of eight. I appreciated the mystery but not the exhaustion. We didn't think to take photos for posterity. I wish we had.
For most in our secular society this will simply be a long holiday weekend, but we can take our moments to kindle or rekindle our faith, to reflect on the sacred and greet the promise of Easter.
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