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Lady Day

So pleased to see what you have written about Lady Day in Holy Week. The modern liturgical "experts" who try to have "Lady Day" transferred until after Easter further sever an important link between the natural calendar and the community on the one hand and the Church on the other. March 25th has for long been an important community and cultural day, a Quarter Day, falling at the equinox, and related to that, a major Christian festival also. Our forebears were wiser. Indeed, two poets of our Church have written of the times when Good Friday falls on March 25th. In 1608 John Donne wrote a poem, “Upon the Annunciation and Passion Falling upon One Day”. It speaks of

Th’ abridgement of Christ’s story which makes one
(As in plain maps, the furthest west is east)
Of th’ angels Ave, and Consummatum est...

And a poem by G.A.Studdert Kennedy is entitled “Good Friday falls on Lady Day”. The first verse reads:

And has our Lady lost Her place?
Does Her white Star burn dim?
Nay, She has lowly veiled Her face
Because of Him. (The Unutterable Beauty, page 87)

The Eastern Orthodox, one might add, would observe both days together. (I have had more than my share of letters and I am quite happy if this goes under a nom de plume - e.g. the one I am thinking of adopting when on April 1st, another significant date, I foreshadow my nomination as Archbishop of Sydney, Elizabeth Lintower.)

John Bunyan
St John the Baptist's, Canberra
Campbelltown, New South Wales, AUSTRALIA
18 March 2013

Winnie the peg?

You wrote "Even North Americans tend not to know very much about Winnipeg...." Well, some North Americans, perhaps. But even they -- all south of the 49th parallel, presumably -- certainly know of a great many internationally famous Winnipeg people.

Mac Robb
(I can't move at present because of a health misadventure)
Brisbane, Queensland, AUSTRALIA
mac.robb@gmail.com
20 March 2013

Earlier letters

We launched our 'Letters to AO' section on 11 May 2003. All published letters are in our archives.