A steady 27% of Americans say the most important problem facing the U.S. is immigration, topping Gallup’s open-ended trend for the third consecutive month, the longest stretch for this particular issue in the past 24 years.

The latest results are based on an April 1-22 Gallup survey, as elevated numbers of migrants continued to seek entry at the U.S. southern border. Immigration tied with the government as the top issue in December 2023, when the number of migrant encounters at the southern border set a record for a single month. In February, as a bipartisan measure to address the issue failed in the U.S. Senate, immigration overtook the government as the nation’s most important problem and has remained there since.

In addition to these recent instances, immigration has topped Gallup’s most important problem list four times since 2000 (either alone or tied with another issue), including at several points in 2014, 2018 and 2019. However, 2024 is the first time that immigration has remained the top issue for multiple successive months.

Read it all.

Immigration is Top U.S. Problem for Third Straight Month. 27% of Americans say the most important problem facing the U.S. is immigration. Yet Congress still can’t fix it. It’s been almost 3 decades since the last major reform. https://t.co/6aQJ1YB7VJ

— Esther Valdes Clayton (@Esther_Valdes) May 1, 2024

The terrorism warning light may not be flashing bright red, but it’s certainly blinking again, with senior officials concerned about a possible attack inspired by an offshoot of the Islamic State or perhaps by the war in Gaza or simply because our porous southern border could offer a pathway to mayhem.

A chilling assessment came from FBI Director Christopher A. Wray in an interview with NBC News last week. “As I look back over my career in law enforcement, I’m hard-pressed to come up with a time when I’ve seen so many different threats, all elevated, all at the same time.” He said concerns were rising before Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, but since then “it’s gone to a whole other level.”

Wray told Congress this month that he worried that lone-wolf extremists or small groups could draw “twisted inspiration” from events in the Middle East. He added that “the potential for a coordinated attack” like the ISIS-K terror rampage at a Moscow auditorium in March was “increasingly concerning.” What keeps him awake, he observed in a speech this month at Vanderbilt University, are what then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called “unknown unknowns.”

Read it all.

A similar threat matrix as the one we face in Europe at the moment.
”The FBI director’s concerns over terrorism are at ‘a whole other level’” https://t.co/o2ceHV1dqD

— Hans Brun (@stellapolaris10) May 1, 2024

The proportion of human beings living on the margin of subsistence is estimated to have fallen from close to 80 per cent in 1820 to just under 10 per cent in 2018. What makes this decline even more remarkable is that the global population rose from 1bn in 1820 to 7.7bn in 2018. Rising prosperity has also helped double global life expectancy to 71 years. In brief, we have moved from a world in which life was, for the great majority, indeed “nasty, brutish, and short” to something altogether better.

As recently as 1970, the rate of “extreme poverty” was still 50 per cent. This extraordinarily rapid recent reduction in the proportion of people living in extreme poverty is due to the huge progress in the much reviled age of economic globalisation. I will never regret this achievement. It shows that the combination of global economic opportunity with external assistance worked.

A crucial source of the latter has been credits from the International Development Association. Contrary to what many feared, ending extreme poverty was not like trying to fill a “bottomless pit”. As a recent report from the World Bank, The Great Reversal, notes, South Korea, China and India were once beneficiaries of IDA credits: 60 years ago, IDA was even informally known as the “Indian Development Association”. Progress has been remarkable and still is: life expectancy in IDA countries rose from 58 to 65 years between 2000 and 2021.

Read it all (subscription).

We risk a lost decade for the world’s poor: Covid, post-Covid inflation, war-induced spikes in energy and food prices and rising interest rates had dire effects and ‘the risk of a lost decade, or perhaps something even worse.’ ⁦@FT⁩
https://t.co/U9G0n5GPOv

— Monica Araya (@MonicaArayaTica) April 30, 2024

New Youth Director for St. Paul’s Anglican in Summerville

Josh Wills has accepted a call to serve as the Director of Youth Ministries at St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Summerville. Josh has been serving in youth ministry since 2017, most recently serving as the Youth and Young Adult Director of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Lexington, SC. He holds a BS in Youth Ministry, Family and Culture from Columbia International University and is getting his MDiv from the same university. He will begin at St. Paul’s Anglican in June.

Read it all.

The Latest Edition of the #Anglican Diocese of #SouthCarolina Enewsletter https://t.co/Xbgoid57cU #parishministry #media #youthministry #religion #lowcountrylife #faith [Josh Willis, diocesan photo] pic.twitter.com/nd95dLZRaO

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) May 1, 2024

The 70-year-old added: “With certain comedians now, people are having fun with them stepping over the line, and us all laughing about it.

“But again, it’s the stand-ups that really have the freedom to do it because no one else gets the blame if it doesn’t go down well.”

Seinfeld has previously said he had been warned not to perform his act at colleges because “they’re so PC”.

Students “just want to use these words – ‘that’s racist, that’s sexist, that’s prejudiced’”, he said, adding: “They don’t know what the hell they’re talking about.”

Read it all.

He's 100 percent correct. One of the toughest jobs in America these days is comedy because everyone gets offended at a glance, and no one can laugh at themselves. | Jerry Seinfeld blames "extreme left and P.C. crap" for downfall of TV sitcoms https://t.co/TRHB3YYkUn pic.twitter.com/g01Ta6IYAM

— Paul Kelly (@pk500) April 30, 2024

In the context of our responsibilities as a wider society, we are grateful to the medical, nursing and care staff who support our loved ones in their last weeks, days and hours. Sadly, however, palliative care is underfunded and limited in Scotland, and our Parliament should focus its energies on improving palliative care rather than on contemplating assisted suicide or euthanasia.

The private member’s bill to introduce assisted suicide for those aged sixteen and over, recently published in the Scottish Parliament, amounts to a rejection of the common responsibility we owe to each other and to those who are ill and dying.

Campaigners call it ‘assisted dying’ when what is really meant is assisted suicide. Palliative care and the process by which families and communities accompany and support those in the final moments of their lives is what we all usually mean by assisted dying. What is now being proposed is that doctors hand a lethal concoction of drugs to a patient to kill themselves. It is a direct, intentional action to end the patient’s life and truly crosses a Rubicon in Scotland.

Read it carefully and read it all.

We heard the Scottish Catholic bishops letter against the assisted suicide bill in Scotland read out at Mass at Castlebay, Barra this morning. A very well-argued document which deserves wide dissemination.

— john milbank (@johnmilbank3) April 28, 2024

Terrorism is a grisly theatre of violence, for which mega events offer a tempting stage. Black September, a Palestinian group, gripped the world’s attention when it took nine Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympics in 1972. is likes to strike at big, crowded venues: the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, the Manchester arena in 2017 and now Crocus City Hall.

These days the West has largely turned away from the long “war on terror”, having expended much blood and treasure to destroy the main jihadist groups. But extremists are on the march again. They have re-emerged in havens old and new, and are thriving in cyberspace. Furthermore, Israel’s war in Gaza is all but certain to radicalise a new generation.

The history of global jihadism is one of reinvention under pressure from the West. After September 11th 2001, America and its allies overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan and evicted al-Qaeda. American forces killed its leader, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan in 2011. Then his successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was eliminated by a drone strike in Kabul in 2022. Al-Qaeda has yet to name a new leader. Meanwhile is, al-Qaeda’s even more wanton progeny, caused a sensation by carving out a “caliphate” across large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, drawing volunteers from Europe and elsewhere. Its last stronghold was destroyed in 2019 and is has lost four leaders since that year began.

Even so, jihadists fight on.

Read it all.

These days the West has largely turned away from the long “war on terror”, having expended much blood and treasure to destroy the main jihadist groups.

But extremists have re-emerged in havens old and new, and are thriving online https://t.co/hUdgKYtJAQ 👇

— The Economist (@TheEconomist) April 30, 2024

Words cannot utter

Christ His returning:—

Mankind, keep Jubilee,

Strip off your mourning,

Crown you with garlands,

Set your lamps burning.

Speech is left speechless;—

Set you to singing,

Fling your hearts open wide,

Set your bells ringing:

Christ the Chief Reaper

Comes, His sheaf bringing…

Read it all.

Today the Church of England commemorates Christina Rossetti, Poet, 1894

Portrait by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1866), Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons pic.twitter.com/ChZItuUGM3

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) April 27, 2024

The disciples found the truth hard to believe.
There had to be breaking bread, eating fish,
before they, too, even Thomas, were lit with
joyfulness. Not much was said about me.
I said good-bye to the son I carried within me
for nine months, nursed, fed, taught to walk.
On Friday when they took him down from the cross,
I held the son I knew,
recognizing him in my arms,
and never saw him again,
not my body’s child. How could I laugh, weep tears
of joy?…

Read it all.

Michelangelo was only 24 years old when he completed the Pietà sculpture pic.twitter.com/huE6XqZ4tc

— Toe-Knee 🇨🇦 (@TonyLea17) April 26, 2024

_Moyst with one drop of thy blood, my dry soule_
Shall (though she now be in extreme degree
Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly,) bee
Freed by that drop, from being starv’d, hard, or foule,
And life, by this death abled, shall controule
Death, whom thy death slue…

Read it all.

Happy Easter! 🐣 Spring is here and with it a time for rebirth and new beginnings. 🌱 See these cute sheep for yourself at Tate Britain. 🐑 Our galleries our open all bank holiday weekend. 😍

​🖼️ 'Our English Coasts, 1852 (‘Strayed Sheep’)', William Holman Hunt, 1852 pic.twitter.com/xk5hinXRWO

— Tate Collective (@TateCollective) April 17, 2022

From there:

The silver trumpets rang across the Dome:
The people knelt upon the ground with awe:
And borne upon the necks of men I saw,
Like some great God, the Holy Lord of Rome.
Priest-like, he wore a robe more white than foam,
And, king-like, swathed himself in royal red,
Three crowns of gold rose high upon his head:
In splendour and in light the Pope passed home.
My heart stole back across wide wastes of years
To One who wandered by a lonely sea,
And sought in vain for any place of rest:
‘Foxes have holes, and every bird its nest.
I, only I, must wander wearily,
And bruise my feet, and drink wine salt with tears.’

"Tell us, Mary: say what thou didst see upon the way.
The tomb the Living did enclose;
I saw Christ's glory as he rose!" (from the Easter Sequence)#EasterAtHome
BL Add 49598; Benedictional of Æthelwold; 963-984; England, S; ff.51v, 52v @BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/c8JJU8LvQG

— Ennius (@red_loeb) April 12, 2020

O GLADNESS! that suspend’st belief
For fear that rapture dreams;
Thou also hast the tears of grief,
And failst in wild extreams.

Tho’ Peter make a clam’rous din,
Will he thy doubts destroy?
Will little Rhoda let him in,
Incredulous with joy?

And thus thro’ gladness and surprize
The saints their Saviour treat;
Nor will they trust their ears and eyes
But by his hands and feet.

These hands of lib’ral love indeed
In infinite degree,
Those feet still frank to move and bleed
For millions and for me.

A watch, to slavish duty train’d,
Was set by spiteful care,
Lest what the sepulchre contain’d
Should find alliance there.

Herodians came to seal the stone
With Pilate’s gracious leave,
Lest dead and friendless, and alone,
Should all their skill deceive.

O dead arise! O friendless stand
By seraphim ador’d—
O solitude! again command
Thy host from heav’n restor’d.

Read it all.

The joy and hope of #Easter is more than one day. It’s an entire season…between #EasterSunday and #Pentecost Sunday, when the beauty of #spring coincides with Catholics proclaiming, “Alleluia,” “Praise the Lord.” Bishop Sullivan's @cathstarherald column! https://t.co/5Orfg4FR8R

— Diocese of Camden (@camdendiocese) April 19, 2024

All year, death, after death, after death.
Then today look how majestically clouds float in the sky

–Barbara Ras (1949- )

The clouds are part of the play pic.twitter.com/gMbQzA7rK4

— Novine Goats 🐐 (@Novine_Mpereka) April 22, 2024

“On Easter Day all of us who were imprisoned for religious convictions were united in one joy of Christ. We were all taken into one feeling, into one spiritual triumph, glorifying the one eternal God. There was no solemn Paschal service with the ringing of church bells, no possibility in our camp to gather for worship, to dress up for the festival, to prepare Easter dishes. On the contrary, there was even more work and more interference than usual. All the prisoners here for religious convictions, whatever their denomination, were surrounded by more spying, by more threats from the secret police.
Yet Easter was there: great, holy, spiritual, unforgettable. It was blessed by the presence of our risen God among us — blessed by the silent Siberian stars and by our sorrows. How our hearts beat joyfully in communion with the great Resurrection! Death is conquered, fear no more, an eternal Easter is given to us! Full of this marvelous Easter, we send you from our prison camp the victorious and joyful tidings: Christ is risen!”

–Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (Revised Ed.), [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995], p. 87. The letter was transcribed by Archpriest George Cheremeteff (d. 1971)

C.F.W. Walther’s marvelous Easter hymn invites all people to join in the praises of Christ Jesus the Lord. By His resurrection, the Word of God made flesh has freed us from the prison of sin, death, and the devil. #SharperIronhttps://t.co/wxhus3wloK

— KFUO Radio (@KFUOradio) April 18, 2024

When I see blossoms spring,
And hear the birds’ song,
A sweet love-longing
Entirely pierces my heart,
All for a love new
That is so sweet and true,
That gladdens all my song:
I know in truth, iwis,
My joy and all my bliss
On him is all ylong. [is all because of him]

Of Jesu Christ I sing,
Who is so fair and free, [noble]
Sweetest of all thing;
His own ought I well to be.
So far for me he sought,
With suffering he me bought,
With wounds two and three;
Well sore he was swung,
And for me with spear was stung,
Nailed to the tree.

Read it all.

April come she will. pic.twitter.com/JiGFC98hOO

— Veritatis Cupitor (@English1Maiden) April 19, 2024

From there:

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

Evening all how are you/? Mine has been soso, havent even started packing for my week trip up in the N York Moors! I must do it tomorrow 🙂 Here's one from last week when I got an okay sunset with the sun setting behind Pendle Hill. have a nice evening all 🙂 pic.twitter.com/tPcmkHrc9a

— David Oxtaby (@Disc_light) April 18, 2024

From here:Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne
And still with sicknesses and shame.
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel thy victorie:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.

"Tell us, Mary: say what thou didst see upon the way.
The tomb the Living did enclose;
I saw Christ's glory as he rose!" (from the Easter Sequence)#EasterAtHome
BL Add 49598; Benedictional of Æthelwold; 963-984; England, S; ff.51v, 52v @BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/c8JJU8LvQG

— Ennius (@red_loeb) April 12, 2020

From there:

As I had always known
he would come, unannounced,
remarkable merely for the absence
of clamour. So truth must appear
to the thinker; so, at a stage
of the experiment, the answer
must quietly emerge. I looked
at him, not with the eye
only, but with the whole
of my being, overflowing with
him as a chalice would
with the sea. Yet was he
no more there than before,
his area occupied
by the unhaloed presences.
You could put your hand
in him without consciousness
of his wounds. The gamblers
at the foot of the unnoticed
cross went on with
their dicing; yet the invisible
garment for which they played
was no longer at stake, but worn
by him in this risen existence.

On the Second Sunday after Easter:
"I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine."

Thou spread'st a table in my sight;
Thy unction, grace bestoweth:
And O what transport of delight
From thy pure chalice floweth!
("The King of love my Shepherd is" – HW Baker) pic.twitter.com/sAqDaWHahv

— The Prayer Book Society (@prayerbook_soc) April 14, 2024

From here:

Moist with one drop of thy blood, my dry soul
Shall (though she now be in extreme degree
Too stony hard, and yet too fleshly,) be
Freed by that drop, from being starved, hard, or foul,
And life, by this death abled, shall control
Death, whom thy death slew; nor shall to me
Fear of first or last death, bring misery,
If in thy little book my name thou enrol,
Flesh in that long sleep is not putrefied,
But made that there, of which, and for which ’twas;
Nor can by other means be glorified.
May then sin’s sleep, and death’s soon from me pass,
That waked from both, I again risen may
Salute the last, and everlasting day.

Resurrection of Christ by Bartolome Esteban Murillo. pic.twitter.com/88CyAPEScA

— Christian Culture (@Christian8Pics) October 14, 2016

pic.twitter.com/6a2QHQJuAb

— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 14, 2024

Read it all.

"Done is a battle on the dragon black,
Our champion Christ confoundit has his force;
The yetis of hell are broken with a crack,
The sign triumphal raisit is of the cross"
– William Dunbar (c. 1500)

Art: Albrecht Dürer, "The Harrowing of Hell" (1512) pic.twitter.com/FnneczvWUw

— Matthew H. Young (@matthenryyoung) March 30, 2024

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right.
Faith and Hope triumphant say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.

While the patient earth lies waking,
Till the morning shall be breaking,
Shuddering ‘neath the burden dread
Of her Master, cold and dead,
Hark! she hears the angels say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.
And when sunrise smites the mountains,
Pouring light from heavenly fountains,
Then the earth blooms out to greet
Once again the blessed feet;
And her countless voices say,
Christ has risen on Easter-Day.

Up and down our lives obedient
Walk, dear Christ, with footsteps radiant,
Till those garden lives shall be
Fair with duties done for Thee;
And our thankful spirits say,
Christ arose on Easter-Day.

–Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

The end & the beginning: Resurrection & Annunciation at second level of Grünewald's astonishing Isenheim Altarpiece, 1515. Today is his day. pic.twitter.com/QbSvhlFCLM

— Dr. Peter Paul Rubens (@PP_Rubens) August 31, 2023

Eternal God, the whole cosmos sings of thy glory, from the dividing of a single cell to the vast expanse of interstellar space: We offer thanks for thy theologian and scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who didst perceive the divine in the evolving creation. Enable us to become faithful stewards of thy divine works and heirs of thy everlasting kingdom; through Jesus Christ, the firstborn of all creation, who with thee and the Holy Spirit livest and reignest, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

– Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
"The Phenomenon of Man" 1955 https://t.co/EESxPHOalG pic.twitter.com/Ml3P6adAIF

— Nicholas P Schiavone (@NickSchiavone) April 4, 2024

This remarkable and deliberate recording of the first Christians’ incomprehension of what they insisted was the irreducible bottom line of their faith teaches us two things. First, it tells us that the early Christians were confident enough about what they called the Resurrection that (to borrow from Prof. Wright) they were prepared to say something like, “I know this sounds ridiculous, but it’s what happened.” And the second thing it tells us is that it took time for the first Christians to figure out what the events of Easter meant—not only for Jesus but for themselves. As they worked that out, their thinking about a lot of things changed profoundly, as Prof. Wright and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI help us to understand in their biblical commentaries.

The way they thought about time and history changed. During Jesus’ public ministry, many of his followers shared in the Jewish messianic expectations of the time: God would soon work something grand for his people in Israel, liberating them from their oppressors and bringing about a new age in which (as Isaiah had prophesied) the nations would stream to the mountain of the Lord and history would end. The early Christians came to understand that the cataclysmic, world-redeeming act that God had promised had taken place at Easter. God’s Kingdom had come not at the end of time but within time—and that had changed the texture of both time and history. History continued, but those shaped by the Easter Effect became the people who knew how history was going to turn out. Because of that, they could live differently. The Easter Effect impelled them to bring a new standard of equality into the world and to embrace death as martyrs if necessary—because they knew, now, that death did not have the final word in the human story.

The way they thought about “resurrection” changed. Pious Jews taught by the reforming Pharisees of Jesus’ time believed in the resurrection of the dead. Easter taught the first Christians, who were all pious Jews, that this resurrection was not the resuscitation of a corpse, nor did it involve the decomposition of a corpse. Jesus’ tomb was empty, but the Risen Lord appeared to his disciples in a transformed body. Those who first experienced the Easter Effect would not have put it in these terms, but as their understanding of what had happened to Jesus and to themselves grew, they grasped that (as Benedict XVI put it in “Jesus of Nazareth–Holy Week”) there had been an “evolutionary leap” in the human condition. A new way of being had been encountered in the manifestly human but utterly different life of the one they met as the Risen Lord. That insight radically changed all those who embraced it.

Read it all.

"Alleluia, alleluia. Christ is risen, who made all things; he has shown mercy on all people. Alleluia, alleluia."

The Resurrection, by Piero della Francesca. pic.twitter.com/6d4oO3WiXb

— Christian Culture (@Christian8Pics) April 14, 2018

I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.

–Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1899)

Good Morning pic.twitter.com/vD3NxaYzDf

— philip jackson (@pajacksonartist) April 8, 2024

Most glorious Lord of Lyfe! that, on this day,
Didst make Thy triumph over death and sin;
And, having harrowd hell, didst bring away
Captivity thence captive, us to win:
This joyous day, deare Lord, with joy begin;
And grant that we, for whom thou diddest dye,
Being with Thy deare blood clene washt from sin,
May live for ever in felicity!

And that Thy love we weighing worthily,
May likewise love Thee for the same againe;
And for Thy sake, that all lyke deare didst buy,
With love may one another entertayne!
So let us love, deare Love, lyke as we ought,
–Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

Happy Easter!! ☀️✝️

Celebrating with sunshine and daffodils here in the South-East, we hope everyone is having a lovely day!

Best wishes from all of us at McCrimmons 💛

The Resurrection by Andrea Mantegna, c.1459, Musee des Beaux Arts, Tours https://t.co/XLp21yhuRC pic.twitter.com/1FPox81FAa

— McCrimmons (@Mccrimmons) April 17, 2022

Take the time to watch and listen to it all.

From there:

Not darkness but twilight
In which even the best
of minds must make its way
now. And slowly the questions
occur, vague but formidable
for all that. We pass our hands
over their surface like blind
men feeling for the mechanism
that will swing them aside. They
yield, but only to re-form
as new problems; and one
does not even do that
but towers immovable
before us.

Is there no way
of other thought of answering
its challenge? There is an anticipation
of it to the point of
dying. There have been times
when, after long on my knees
in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled
from my mind, and I have looked
in and seen the old questions lie
folded and in a place
by themselves, like the piled
graveclothes of love’s risen body.

Christ is risen! Easter blessings to all 🖼 Resurrection, Luca Giordano, 1665 #HappyEaster #Alleluia #AMDG pic.twitter.com/8sU4wqpY2m

— Joe Petriello (@joepetriello) April 12, 2020

‘They walked to the Eastern edge of the hill and looked down. The one big star had almost disappeared. The country all looked dark grey, but beyond, at the very end of the world, the sea showed pale. The sky began to turn red. They walked to and fro more times than they could count between the dead Aslan and the Eastern ridge, trying to keep warm; and oh, how tired their legs felt. Then at last, as they stood for a moment looking out towards the sea and Cair Paravel (which they could now just make out) the red turned to gold along the line where the sea and the sky met and very slowly up came the edge of the sun. At that moment they heard from behind them a loud noise—a great cracking, deafening noise as if a giant had broken a giant’s plate.
“What’s that?” said Lucy, clutching Susan’s arm.
“I—I feel afraid to turn round,” said Susan; “something awful is happening.”
“They’re doing something worse to him,” said Lucy. “Come on!” And she turned, pulling Susan round with her.
The rising of the sun had made everything look so different—all the colours and shadows were changed—that for a moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end; and there was no Aslan.
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the two girls rushing back to the Table.
“Oh, it’s too bad,” sobbed Lucy; “they might have left the body alone.”
“Who’s done it?” cried Susan. “What does it mean? Is it more magic?”
“Yes!” said a great voice behind their backs. “It is more magic.” They looked round. There, shining in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had apparently grown again) stood Aslan himself.
“Oh, Aslan!” cried both the children, staring up at him, almost as much frightened as they were glad.
“Aren’t you dead then, dear Aslan?” said Lucy.
“Not now,” said Aslan.
“You’re not—not a—?” asked Susan in a shaky voice. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word ghost.
Aslan stooped his golden head and licked her forehead. The warmth of his breath and a rich sort of smell that seemed to hang about his hair came all over her.
“Do I look it?” he said.
“Oh, you’re real, you’re real! Oh, Aslan!” cried Lucy and both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses.
“But what does it all mean?” asked Susan when they were somewhat calmer.
“It means,” said Aslan, “that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards. And now—
“Oh yes. Now?” said Lucy jumping up and clapping her hands.
“Oh, children,” said the Lion, “I feel my strength coming back to me. Oh, children, catch me if you can!” He stood for a second, his eyes very bright, his limbs quivering, lashing himself with his tail. Then he made a leap high over their heads and landed on the other side of the Table. Laughing, though she didn’t know why, Lucy scrambled over it to reach him. Aslan leaped again. A mad chase began. Round and round the hill-top he led them, now hopelessly out of their reach, now letting them almost catch his tail, now diving between them, now tossing them in the air with his huge and beautifully velveted paws and catching them again, and now stopping unexpectedly so that all three of them rolled over together in a happy laughing heap of fur and arms and legs. It was such a romp as no one has ever had except in Narnia; and whether it was more like playing with a thunderstorm or playing with a kitten Lucy could never make up her mind. And the funny thing was that when all three finally lay together panting in the sun the girls no longer felt in the least tired or hungry or thirsty.
“And now,” said Aslan presently, “to business. I feel I am going to roar. You had better put your fingers in your ears.”
And they did. And Aslan stood up and when he opened his mouth to roar his face became so terrible that they did not dare to look at it. And they saw all the trees in front of him bend before the blast of his roaring as grass bends in a meadow before the wind. Then he said,
“We have a long journey to go. You must ride on me.” And he crouched down and the children climbed onto his warm, golden back and Susan sat first holding on tightly to his mane and Lucy sat behind holding on tightly to Susan. And with a great heave he rose underneath them and then shot off, faster than any horse could go, downhill and into the thick of the forest.
That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia. Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that; and then take away the heavy noise of the hoofs and the jingle of the harness and imagine instead the almost noiseless padding of the great paws. Then imagine instead of the black or grey or chestnut back of the horse the soft roughness of golden fur, and the mane flying back in the wind. And then imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse….’

—The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Chapter XV

Happy Easter! I've always liked this painting of Caravaggio's. Good art demonstrates skill; masterpieces tell an entire story.

"Caravaggio was a master of light and shadow, and he uses this chiaroscuro to create a narrative through line in this piece. The shadows (representing… pic.twitter.com/fyK9HAjgeu

— Lawrence Hamtil (@lhamtil) March 31, 2024

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.
The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that pierced died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not paper-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

–John Updike (1932-2009)

The Risen Lord at Emmaus: illustrating Easter Wednesday's Gospel with this window from Sainte-Pierre in Chartres. https://t.co/QAyeUgJBbd pic.twitter.com/s3Qg2sHuq0

— Fr Lawrence Lew, O.P. (@LawrenceOP) April 3, 2024