This is the last bulletin publication. With thanksgiving for more than 100 years of service to the Catholic Community, we bid our goodbyes to JS Paluch. From grandparents to grandchildren, the company has faithfully carried out its parish communication services. The pressures of the economy that we have come to know all too well, make it impossible to continue.
All of us also know quite well other pressures besides the economy; they are all intertwined. It is providential that we enter into the holy season of Lent to rediscover once again that God is the ultimate inspiration of our lives.
With the tracing of the cross upon our foreheads with ashes, we begin the 40-day journey. This journey is both personal and communal; never private and in isolation. Only with the support of one another can we have the honesty to cross the barren terrain of humanity that longs for something different. It is too easy to put on the demeanor of strength and superiority and
rejection of any help. As if, such fantasy and aƫtudes of entitlement could bully its way into life with God.
The Hebrews crossed the sea and the desert and the river; and also crossed the mountains of doubt, betrayal, and idolatry and became Israel. A holy people, a sign of God’s promise fulfilled. The consummation of God’s promise would come centuries later through the person of Christ. He too would cross sea, desert, and river. Submerged into the very depths of humanity, entered the very hell of doubt, betrayal, and the idolatry of self-aggrandizement. His fidelity, born not of human strength, but of total dependence on God’s ever-present love, brought him to the newness of creation.
Through the Lenten journey, we follow in the footsteps of our older brothers and sisters, the people of Israel; in the footsteps of Christ, and those of our immediate ancestors. What awaits us is the joy of renewal – a people entering the Promised Land as if it were for the first time; – a people resurrected with Christ as if it were for the first time. That will be the Easter Joy that becomes a promise of self-gift, or ourselves, as Church, for all.
Breathe in the promise fulfilled and exhale the Spirit that flows through us. Such movement of renewal, that the day might come when there be no pain and anger not healed; that there be no tears of impotence shed before the desperate sound of what could have been; that there be no fear that has not been transformed by an act of love.
Breathe in the promise fulfilled and exhale the Spirit that flows through us. It is a missionary Spirit, yours and mine to make real.
P. Francisco Gómez, S.T.
Ps, David O’Connel, rest in peace