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LENTEN REGULATIONS

 
 
SACRAMENT OF RECONCILLIATION
 SATURDAY 3:30PM – 4:30PM ENGLISH
SUNDAY 3:30PM – 4:30PM SPANISH
OR BY APPOINTMENT
 
 
SUNDAY REFLECTION

As we draw close to Holy Week, we hear Jesus talk about his approaching death.  Yet his message to his disciples is not so much about his death as it is about eternal life.  As Christians, we know that as difficult as death is, our true focus, our true hope is in eternal life, trusting that our Lord is our source  of eternal salvation.  During this final week before Holy Week, let us keep in mind that just as our Lenten journey will not end with Good Friday, but with Easter, so too does our own life’s journey end not in death but in new life.

INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH

One focus during Lent is to reflect on our own death and to see our way through it. We all must die, as much as we don’t like the fact. We try to hide it, dodge it, deny it. Yet we can’t in fact escape it. Jesus came into the world, not so much to do away with death (not immediately) but to teach us how to die by his example and then to assure us that death does not say the last word about life. When we walk into the valley of death we do not walk alone. Jesus is with us because he’s been there before and knows what it is like. Moreover, he promises us that just as he rose from the dead so will we. We will all be young again. We will all laugh again.

Once upon a time there was a young grandmother who totally adored her oldest grandson (like most grandmothers do). He was a good young man too. Handsome, friendly, courteous, more mature than you could reasonably expect any teenager to be. He was also an excellent athlete and was to be valedictorian of his class. Then, just a week before graduation, another teen (quite drunk) plowed into the car in which the young man was returning from a baseball game. He died three hours later in the hospital. Everyone in the family was, devastated, as you can well imagine. The grandmother was furious. “Why do such terrible things happen?” she demanded. “Why did it have to happen to my grandson? What kind of God would permit this to happen to me? He must be a cruel and vicious God. Why should I believe in him? I don’t believe in him. My grandson was so young, he had the rest of his life ahead of him. It’s all right for old people to die, but not for someone who had a right to a long and happy life. I don’t believe in heaven. I don’t believe in anything.” She carried on like this for months, making the tragedy even harder for her family. She stopped going to Church and refused to talk to the priest who dropped by her house to talk to her. “I just hate God,” she insisted. Then one night, maybe she was dreaming, maybe she was half away, her grandson, in his baseball uniform, came to visit it her. “Cool it, Grams.” he told her. “I’m happy. Life is much better where I am. You’re not acting like my grams any more. We all have to die sometime, young or old, but here we’re all young and we’re all laughing.” So, the grandmother began to let go of her grief and rage.

 

SOWING THE GOOD SEED 

As an eighteen-year-old, Patrick found himself in a tragic condition. He was a wretched slave, far from home and made to herd animals out on a cold mountainside in Antrim. He now had plenty of time for looking at nature and somehow it was there that he encountered God for the first time. Oh yes, Patrick’s father was a deacon and his grandfather a priest, but as a youth Patrick had not bothered with religion while growing up in the comfort of Roman Britain. Only after his life was turned upside down by those Irish slave-raiders did he find a new depth in his heart. Whatever it was about the land and scenery of Ireland, it produced a mystical spirit in this captured Roman. For him, nature became the sacrament of the presence of God. Maybe it was the barren mountains, or the awesome beauty of the coastline, or the turning of the seasons. For whatever reason, he learned to treasure the beauty of the land, and realize that God was very near.

One day Patrick felt the call (like Peter, Andrew and the others), to follow Jesus Christ and spend his life sharing Christ with others. He too became a fisher of men – and women, among the people of Ireland. As he tells it in his Confessions, he did it very successfully, to his own amazement. For he calls himself a sinner, without learning, a stone lying in the mud. But the Lord by his grace raised up that stone, and set it on the very top of the wall, to hold the structure together. Patrick could easily see the words of the prophet Amos applying to himself: “then the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’” In Patrick’s case, the call was to return to the land where he had been taken as a slave, but with the mission to bring the men and women of Ireland the glorious liberty of the children of God.

In the Confessions there aremany echoes of St Paul’s writings, for Patrick admired the teaching and example of the great apostle from Tarsus. Not least, his zealous pastoral care for the Irish people mirrors how Paul worked among the Christians of Thessalonica. Patrick’s refusal to accept gifts of gold and silver from his converts imitated St. Paul’s reluctance to make financial profit from preaching the Gospel. Also, his love for his converts made Patrick vow to stay on in Ireland for the rest of his life. How well he followed the way of St Paul: “we were gentle among you, like a nurse tenderly caring for her own children. So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

Patrick’s Loricum or Breastplate has the famous Celtic prayer, focused on union with Christ: “Christ be with me, Christ surround me, Christ be in my speaking, Christ be in my thinking, Christ be in my sleeping, Christ be in my waking, . . . Christ be in my ever-living soul, Christ be my eternity.” As Patrick prayed for the Irish people on the mountain in Mayo which bears his name (Cruach Padraig), let’s pray for each other on his feast-day:

“May you recognize in your life the presence, the power and the light of Christ. May you realize that you are never alone, for He is always with you; that your living soul connects you with the rhythm of the universe. And may the road rise up to meet you and the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and the rain fall soft upon your fields. And, until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of His hand.”

 

Gospel: John 12:20-30

By losing their life, the followers of Jesus will find it in a new way.

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say ” ‘ Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this our Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine.”

CATHOLICISM