March 2, 2022, is just a few weeks away; this is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. With honest determination, we will make the 40-day journey to Jerusalem and celebrate Palm Sunday on April 10. Then, a Holy Week after, on April 17th. All bells are rung and the Gloria is proclaimed with the celebration of Holy Saturday and the beginning of the fifty days of Easter. The Easter proclamation of “He is Risen!” is what we long for. With the rising of Christ is our own rising as well.
On March 2, with ashes upon our heads, we soberly recognize that we are dust, and to dust, we shall return – BUT – we will always be more than dust! The love of God that moves us to love our neighbor, makes an infinite difference. In search for renewal, for forty days, the insistence will be there:
You have been hurt and reduced to dust, but God in the person of Jesus restores and heals.
You have hurt others and reduced them to dust, but God in the person of Jesus restores and heals.
Others have forgiven you.
You have forgiven others.
Not only renewal do we seek, but we also seek to walk with the catechumenate. These are the young and maybe not so young members of our community who have been drawn to become fully initiated into the Catholic Church. For many of them, this will be the final stage before Baptism, Confirmation and, Eucharist. We who have been fully initiated into the Church; we who have received all our sacraments, need to model for the women and men in the catechumenate what it means to be disciples of Christ.
And, after 40 days we arrive at Holy Saturday. Holy Saturday proclaims the joy of the Resurrection of Christ. For the 50 days of Easter, the church will sing Alleluia, the Lord is Risen! It must be insisted, it is not just about Christ it’s about all of us in Christ, have Resurrected!
The 50 days of Easter flow into the feast of Pentecost – the celebration of the birth of Church. Filled with the Spirit of the Risen Christ, at that first Pentecost brothers and sisters went out to all the world to proclaim in the most credible way, who we are in Christ.
That is the journey we have before us, to walk together and find Christ for the first time or as if it were for the first time, and become ever more the credible presence of the Lord in the world.
Father Francisco Gómez, S.T.