Pastor’s Notes

Our Lent began with Valentines Day.  The Gospels give us only a glimpse of Jesus’ early years, but from what happens later we can suppose that his hidden years were spent “forming the heart” he operated out of in his preaching and healing work.  He had already gone to the heart of the human struggle for meaning, and the Letter to the Hebrews this week says, “by his suffering he learned obedience” (Heb 5:8). We US Americans saw the shooting in Parkland, Florida and our hearts as a country were broken. We stand with the high school students who are marching next Saturday for the banning of armaments that threaten our schools. 

Don’t most of us find God in the school of “hard knocks?” Jesus shocks his Greek visitors with the paradox he himself is about to embrace: the grain of wheat that consciously pours out its life…to death on a cross.  It is by his execution (in the school of human cruelty) that he will establish an apex of a new universe: self-emptying love.   Archbishop Tutu of South Africa noted this after the fall of apartheid in South Africa. No Future Without Forgiveness is what he named his book.  We will not survive as a species unless we learn to forgive.  Who should know more about this than the followers of Christ? It will give birth to a new brand of human community. 

Jesus reveals God as the One who pours out his heart into the world even as it rejects the divine offer of reconciliation.   God’s unconditional love transforms enemies into friends, cleanses the heart of selfishness and restores the center of balance to a world disjointed and disoriented by human self-centeredness.  Jesus will be “lifted up” — crucified and raised — and will draw everything to a new human vision.  All of us, inhabitants of mother earth, are invited to follow Jesus’ example.   This is the heart of the matter and the secret of a well-lived life. 

Our candidates for the Easter Sacraments at the 9 am Mass of the Scrutinies, get the story of the Raising of Lazarus.  We get raised up all the time, “resurrected” a lot, by interaction with Jesus of Nazareth.  Our heart becomes like his.  If you were an eyewitness on the day when Jesus called Lazarus back to life, any thought on your reaction?  Would we have believed with our own eyes?  Or “exited stage left” as fast as our little legs could carry us.  I wonder if that would have left me standing there like a corpse, just trembling and terrified?    

Holy Week is soon upon us and all are invited to the Sacred Triduum of three Holy days.  These celebrations rest at the heart of our Catholic Christian faith. All sinners are particularly welcomed to the Communal Penance Liturgy on Saturday, March 24th at 3:30 pm in the Basilica. Enough confessors will be provided to keep this service to about an hour.  We wash more feet on Holy Thursday than any community I know.  Join us.  Mark Twain once noted that “Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”  It builds heart and raises up unforgettable human beings. 

A gentle week,
Fr. Michael Weldon, OFM