Pastor’s Pen
PALM SUNDAY OF THE LORD’S PASSION
A Word from Fr. Bob
Dear Church Family,
As I sit in my favorite prayer chair on this Wednesday morning with the sun shining in on me, I reflect once again on this sacred journey I take with you each Lent. I also reflect on the blessings that are ours as we go through these sacred ceremonies. Starting with today, which is Palm Sunday. We have praised the Lord with Hosannas and we tried to parade around the church without falling to witness that God is good all the time and all the time God is good. Here we praise Jesus! Maybe without the crowd in a few days we may see our sinfulness. As a result, as the scripture shows the crowd and sometimes us, we all get turned around through sinfulness.
Wednesday at 7 p.m. night we will have our last Lenten Mass. On Good Friday it is solemn giving of Jesus’ life for us, His people. We sometimes in our sinfulness don’t totally appreciate God loving us. We can also see God’s love for us on Holy Thursday as we celebrate the institution of two of the seven great sacraments, Holy Orders and Holy Eucharist. In Holy Orders, we see that Jesus is giving the power to His apostles and to us to say the sacred words over the bread and wine. Then it becomes present again. I am so privileged to represent all of you in that. We do that very solemnly at 7 p.m. Holy Thursday and 7 p.m. on Good Friday. We will celebrate in a very bland way with Jesus’ passion and death. Then His veneration of the symbol we have used through the centuries The Cross as a sign of our salvation and a sign of ourselves sinning but being redeemed. Then Holy Saturday at 8 p.m. we will receive some into our Catholic Family and we will light a fire outside of the church and we will come into the darkened church. It is so beautiful in our darkened church because the stars shine on the ceiling with our laser beams when it is dark. It is a beautiful sign of light coming into the darkened world. That’s what we are celebrate. With that evening which Saint Augustine has said through the centuries and it is good to think of things Saint Augustine says when he calls this day Holy Saturday, the mother of all celebrations because it is going from death to life. Then of course, Easter Sunday, we will hold our Masses at the regular times. Thanks for sharing with me this Lenten Season and thanks for being part of Holy week in lots of beautiful ways. Then we can finally Proclaim that sacred word that we don’t say but it is written on the back of my car. God Bless!
Love, Fr. Bob
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