Dear Friends,
I hope you have enjoyed the personal reflections on the power of prayer that fellow parishioners have shared with us in this space during the season of Lent. We have a few more to share with you during the Easter season. I know reading them has impacted me and encouraged me to place before God people who are in need and ask for God’s help. Perhaps it has done the same for you.
Every Lenten journey has a goal – to get us ready to encounter the Risen Lord in the Easter Season in a more profound way. The extra time with the Lord in prayer and dedicated works of mercy should have prepared us for a deeper encounter.
You might recall, at the beginning of Lent during our Parish Mission, Fr. Sichko asked a question about why Zacchaeus climbed the tree. Most of us answered because he was short, but Fr. Sichko was looking for a deeper reason. He said the answer was because Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus. It was desire that caused him to climb a tree. A strong desire overcomes our natural limitations; being “short,” he overcomes and transcends himself. The question placed before us then is whether we desire the right things, whether the power of desire in us is aimed at the right goal. What are we willing to do to “see” Jesus?
At the beginning of each Sunday Mass this Lent we have sung about our need to have our eyes and ears and hearts opened. We sang about seeing Jesus’ face, hearing Jesus’ voice, and loving like Jesus loved. Liturgically, we emphasized the Penitential Rite with a bit of incense and a chanted Kyrie to say that this quest for honesty and humility is the beginning of true repentance. For repentance, above all else, is a return to the original order of things, the restoration of the right vision: we are made in the likeness of God. We want to live and become more fully what we are – God’s children.
I suppose the whole season of Lent may appear to some as artificial. That is more a matter of perception rather than reality. We humans are natural procrastinators. To have a declared season of repentance, examination, and spiritual discipline encourages us to do what Jesus already encouraged us to do. It is a serious attempt to provide community encouragement for individual spiritual discipline and holiness.
Now we come to the Easter Season and we celebrate the truth about ourselves that Jesus brings. The truth that we, freed from the fear of death, can live courageously and abundantly. That we can love with abandon. That we no longer have to define ourselves as others have named us but that we can truly see ourselves as children of God, sharing God’s life for all eternity.
Jesus has risen from the dead. You, my friends, rise with Him. Rejoice in that truth. Julian of Norwich was a mystic who lived in the 14th century. Near death as a young woman, she experienced visions from God. In one of those visions, God spoke to her in words that have become so comforting to so many. She tells it this way:
“In my folly, before this time I often wondered why, by the great foreseeing wisdom of God, the onset of sin was not prevented: for then, I thought, all should have been well. This impulse [of thought] was much to be avoided, but nevertheless I mourned and sorrowed because of it, without reason and discretion.
But Jesus, who in this vision informed me of all that is needed by me, answered with these words and said: ‘It was necessary that there should be sin; but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’
These words were said most tenderly, showing no manner of blame to me nor to any who shall be saved.”
Happy Easter my friends! All shall be well!
Peace,
Fr. Damian