Pastor's Spiritual Reflections

By Fr. Leo Schneider (4/1/2007)

Dear People of Holy Name,

Last Sunday we spent four hours together reflecting on the Paschal Mystery, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This week we celebrate the Paschal Mystery as our sharing in the life of God, real and present in our own day in the Easter Triduum, the three days of Easter, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil. Each celebration focuses on the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

On Holy Thursday we celebrate the life of Jesus in his washing of the disciple’s feet. He shows us again that he came not to be served but to serve, and stoops to the lowest level of service to be our example of how to love one another. In the Eucharist we not only remember the One who poured his life out for us, but who continues to do so in His real presence in the Sacrament of bread and wine. We unite ourselves to him who heals and rises up.

On Good Friday we embrace the worst in humanity that calls out for redemption. Just as Jesus embraced humanity at its worst so he could redeem humanity, we embrace all the pain of injustice and suffering in the world and in our hearts. In venerating the cross we unite our suffering and that of all humanity, to the suffering of Jesus Christ. We share fully in the death of Christ so we may rise with him.

The Easter Vigil is our celebration of the power of the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead and who is with us to raise us up and heal the scars left on humanity by her sins. On that night we rise up with the Lord celebrating hope, and it becomes realized in the healing dawn of the day of the Lord. We rejoice!

Every year I hope the church will be filled to overflowing, as it can be at Christmas or on Easter Sunday, to celebrate the triduum. Or I think of how full our churches were after 911 and wonder if it is only when confronted with a suffering we can’t deny, that we turn to God. Perhaps people stay away because it is difficult to be in touch with the pain in our lives, but then again Good Friday sees a fairly full house.

More than likely it hasn’t become a tradition in our lives to celebrate the Paschal Mystery during Holy Week on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night with the Vigil of the Resurrection. I’m inviting you to make it a tradition in your lives and promise it will be a deep and profound way of being in God. There is no other experience that compares, no sport event or concert, to gathering together with those whose faith is real, to celebrate in a special way the presence of the God who is all.

Let us pray that the Lord may bless our Holy Week liturgies again this year so that our shared rituals may provide us with moments touched by the divine. Let us join together this week and journey together to Easter, that that day may be all that the Lord has promised it to be.

Sincerely looking forward to praying with you this week,

Fr. Leo