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On Easter Sunday, Grace’s grandfather and dad took us, along with two of Grace’s sisters, out for a drive/tour around Vancouver. We stopped, at one point, by a dock a little to the east of Stanley Park, not too far from Vancouver’s downtown area.

There was a fair bit of subject matter to shoot, including this row of cargo containers, which were literally right next to where we parked. I took the shot kind of haphazardly, holding the camera out over a half-height fence and chancing an unaimed photo; with a bit of cropping, it turned out really well.

Edit-wise, I played around with this photo for a while before deciding on how I wanted to present it, which turned out to be in its original form. I made two other versions of the picture, one in which only the red/orange shades are still coloured, and one in which only the blue shades remain. But while saturation adjustments were fun, I decided to post the original photo as the Pic of the Day.

It was a fairly cloudy day, and I found it a bit surprising that I had to shift the ISO to 200 in order to get good outdoor shots; usually, lightly-coloured clouds improve the lighting in a scene (or at least that has been my experience) because they diffuse the light. Not so today. Still, ISO 200 is pretty tame, and I only did a bit of noise reduction on this picture. I also boosted the orange, blue, and red saturations a little bit, to bring out the containers a bit more.

Animals can be fun subjects for pictures.

This is Penny, Grace’s grandparents’ pet dog. That’s really all I have to say about her — I’m not really a dog person, and so while I enjoy taking pictures of them, I don’t dwell on their merits as much as I do with Cats.

Despite the overexposed sections, I had to shoot this picture at a high ISO, because while there was a fair bit of light coming in to the house, the angles at which it was coming in were not conducive to proper exposure. C’est la vie, I suppose.

Edit-wise, apart from the noise reduction required, I didn’t do all that much to this shot; I applied as much sharpening as I thought I could get away with, in addition to the normal calibration/Punch preset that I always use, and I have to say that I’m pleased at how much detail Lightroom was able to eke out of the scene; in particular, Penny’s fur retains a lot of fine detail.

It seems fitting to mark Easter with an interior shot of a Catholic cathedral since, after all, the Church came to be in the wake of Christ’s glorious resurrection, which we mark on this day. It is His enduring legacy, and the means of His ongoing revelation to all humankind.

This was a tricky shot to get right, and I had to adjust the camera’s position two or three times before I was satisfied. Once I had it, I struggled to get the white balance of the scene correct — uses some very odd lighting. But I’m satisfied with how the picture turned out, thanks to several handy Lightroom presets that I decided to experiment with.

This is Edmonton’s foremost Catholic church, and I imagine that it must have been packed last night during the celebration of the Vigil Mass.

So, I’m in Vancouver at present, celebrating Easter with Grace’s family there. Obviously, then, I’m not at my computer able to compose a suitable reflection on the idea of Easter and the meaning of the resurrection of Christ. Given a slightly less hectic week, I might have been able to compose just such a reflection, but as it is I will have to settle for re-iterating a point I made last year:

It is perhaps fitting to examine, then, how Easter completes the whole of the Christian year and unifies the faith. Christianity is not a series of beliefs, each atomically isolated from the others, but is rather one unified faith out of which flow many teachings that complement and enhance each other, and all of which are completed and joined by the pivotal historical event that is remembered this week: the death and resurrection of Christ. There is, within Holy Week, a smaller example of this same phenomenon, in our observance of Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday), His institution of the Sacrament of the Eucharist (Holy Thursday) and his re-statement of the need for the Sacraments of Baptism and Reconciliation (also Holy Thursday), to His death (Good Friday) and resurrection (Easter Sunday). Within the week now almost over, the whole of Christianity and the whole of the Catholic expression of that faith finds its core, its foundation.

And to their credit, most Catholic churches emphasize the Sacraments during this season, as they ought…indeed, it is not by accident that adult baptisms take place during the Vigil Mass.

The need for baptism is, as noted, re-iterated by Christ in poignant fashion on Holy Thursday, when He washed the feet of the disciples. “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet,” our Lord taught, and as with everything Christ said there is a deeper message being conveyed in that teaching than just the necessity of personal hygeine. Baptism is our first washing, the Sacramental sign of the way in which we are cleaned by the Lord, and water is the symbol of cleansing which we use. I’ve always been mystified by Protestants who declare confidently that water baptism is not necessary for salvation; while it is doubtless true that God, in His mercy, welcomes into His Kingdom those infants which die before being baptized (but then, to what extent are infants capable of sin?), it is equally true all the same that God desires, and that Christ taught, that baptism is necessary.

Likewise, many churches offer special penetential services during Holy Week, and again they do well to do so, because Christ likewise commanded that we return again and again to be cleansed, and commissioned His disciples to forgive sins in His name, and through His grace. Confession — the Sacrament of Reconciliation — is necessary as well in a fully-lived Christian life. “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me,” Christ cautions Peter, following it up with the teaching outlined previously, and again the Lord is not here talking about personal hygeine. We too must seek to be cleansed of our sinfulness in Christ, and must do so repeatedly, just as in Hebrew custom the feet were to be washed regularly. If we do not seek that repeated cleansing, we too will have no share in Christ.

And of course, Catholic churches offer the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Real Presence, the literal and truthful Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, which Christ Himself gave to us in His transformation of the Passover Meal into the Feast of the Lamb and the food by which all might know salvation.

All of those are elements, but they are all given their whole meaning not only in Good Friday, but in what we celebrate on Easter Sunday — the risen Christ, the resurrection, Christ (and, by extension, God’s) victory over death won for the sake of all mankind, that we too might be able one day to join the chorus of angels in glorifying God in the Kingdom that is to come. It is in Christ’s death and resurrection that the Eucharistic meal is given its meaning, its form, and its power, for as it marks Christ’s being broken and shedding blood for our sake, so Christ was actually broken, and did actually shed blood, for our salvation.

At the same time, it is in Christ’s death and resurrection that we are truly cleansed from our sinfulness, for in His death and resurrection Christ took upon Himself the full weight of all human sin — past, present, and future — and made it to die with him, that we too might be dead to sin and risen in Christ, just as he later arose in glory.

And just as water and blood poured from our Lord’s pierced side, so too do we baptise with water, that all who share in baptism might have a share in due time in the life that is to come, which Christ’s resurrection has secured for His faithful.

Everything ties together in this one week, and as I have said this is an atomic expression of the whole of Christian year, and the whole of the Christian faith, and the way it ties together as well.

Catholicism is a complete, whole, unified faith, the Christian faith among all Christian denominations out there, and the Church is the means by which God’s fullest revelation is given to humanity. It is my prayer, this and every Easter season, that more and more people will be called to conversion during this time and throughout the year. For the Church is the light, and in her is found freedom and salvation. All else is darkness.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

In what will likely be my only extended holiday of the year, Grace and I will be heading out to Vancouver today to celebrate Easter with her family at her grandparents’ house. It’ll be my first trip out to British Columbia in the better part of a decade (I don’t count choir tours toward that remark), and we’ll be staying out there an extra week so that we can celebrate Grace’s grandfather’s birthday the following weekend.

In the interim, we’ll probably try and visit my grandparents, and maybe a few other relatives of both mine and hers that live in or near the city.

Which means, O Reader, that I’ll be posting minimal amounts of content to the site over the next between now and April 1st. In the meantime, I’ve built up enough of a buffer of Pics of the Day that you should be able to check back every day between now and then and find something new. Additionally, you can check out any or all of these fine websites if you need your daily fix of content:

• Ace of Spaces
• Amy Welborm
• Ars Technica
• Blazing Cat Fur
• Chesterton & Friends
• Chris Johnson
• Church of the Masses
• Custos Fidei
• Dale Price
• David Warren
• Disputations
• Dr. Helen
• Dr. Sanity
• Engadget
• Ezra Levant
• Free Mark Steyn!
• George Jonas
• GetReligion
• Girl on the Right
• Halls of Macadamia
• John C. Wright
• Kathy Shaidle
• Knowledge is Power
• La Vie Catholique
• LIBERTAS
• Mark Shea
• Mark Steyn
• Michael Yon
• Michelle Malkin
• Mike Brock
• Newsbusters
• Peter Hitchens
• Pontifications
• ProWomanProLife
• Right Wing News
• Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred
• Singing in the Reign
• Slashdot
• Small Dead Animals
• Steve Janke
• Stupidus
• Suicide of the West
• The Anchoress
• The Curt Jester
• The Jawa Report
• The Last Amazon
• The People’s Cube
• Truth Laid Bear
• Udolpho
• Vox Day
• Western Resistance

And finally, O Reader, if you live in or near the Edmonton area and appreciate good choral music, the Mixed Chorus will be holding their 64th Annual Spring Concert at the Francis Winspear Centre for Music on Saturday, April 5th. Get your tickets soon!

And finally, when all else fails: chill out and laugh at a lolcat.

It’s been a hectic, hectic week for me as I’ve rushed to finish projects at work before Grace and I depart for Vancouver for the next couple of weeks to celebrate Easter with her family. Normally, I’d have found time to write a lengthy reflection on Good