“When the days for his being taken up were fulfilled, Jesus resolutely took the road to Jerusalem.”
Lk 9,51

Dear parishioners,

Here we are, headed into Holy Week and the Pascal Triduum. Rina Lasnier, a French Catholic poetess wrote: “I dream of a morning that would be for once dissimilar.” By “dissimilar” she meant of course “better”. I see Holy Week and the Triduum as just such a dissimilar, better morning. In ordinary time, we bear the burden and the yoke of sin and suffering and dying as best we can. But Holy Week and the Triduum are dissimilar. First in the obvious sense that we gather as a community on Holy Thursday to remember the Lord’s Last Supper, on Good Friday to remember his Passion and Death, and on Holy Saturday and Sunday to celebrate his Resurrection. But this week is dissimilar also in a mysteriously beautiful way. In Holy Week and in the Triduum, like Jesus, we resolutely stare down sin and suffering and dying, and we say to them, like St. Paul, “Where, o death, is your victory? Where, o death, is your sting?” 1 Co 15,55 We remember and celebrate the final victory of Christ over sin, suffering and death.

The grace of all graces for a Christian is to intentionally embrace and lift up one’s yoke and burden as a “filling up of what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church.” Col 1,24 When we do that, a miracle occurs. Our yokes become mysteriously easy and our burdens, mysteriously light. By the grace of God, may this be the experience of all of us as we remember Jesus’ passion and death, and rising again from death in this year’s Easter Triduum. Since we suffer in any case, may our suffering become a suffering with Christ for the redemption of the Church and of the world.

A blessed Holy Week and Pascal Triduum to you all,

Fr. Guy