Monday Message, March 27, 2023

KNOW

Technically, Lent ends at the first intonation of the Gloria on Holy Thursday, which makes this the last full week of Lent – a good time to check in on your Lenten sacrifices.

If any parish or school is using Augustine Institute’s Word of Life K-8 Curriculum, I would like to hear what you think. Email Patrick with your thoughts.

This week, we host the Adult Confirmation. Register here for English and here for Spanish. Remember, if you have someone who lacks ONLY Confirmation and is over 18, they can attend this workshop and then receive the sacrament on Pentecost.

If you have not yet bought tickets or encouraged others to do so – please spread the word about Made for More, a great presentation taking place on the 27th in Greenwich.

Need help with LEAD? Join Carmela every Wednesday at 2 pm. Also, please check your parish team and get those spots filled this week if you can.

There is only one more session with the Bishop – April 22, 2023 at All Saints. Be sure your catechists have attended one of these nine sessions please.

REFLECT

The acting out of love to the extent of dying on a cross is a mystery I have never been fully able to understand. My limited ability to love stands embarrassed at such extravagance. My daily attempt falls short of my dreams. I carry my crosses carefully, trying to make sure they don’t take too much out of me.

I always leave a little pink around the edges of my crosses. I can not bear unpleasant things. I honestly don’t know how Jesus did it! I can hardly accept WHY he did it. The why he did it always makes me feel guilty about the pink around the edges.

During Lent, at least, I’d like to let the pink go. I’d like to be content for forty days with a cross that is not pretty. But I am so young in my faith. It is hard not to cheat a little and search for soft, easy, pretty crosses.

O God of Lent, remember me. Help me to take all the clutter that I try to decorate my crosses with, all the ways I try to camouflage your death and dying because my faith has not grown enough and to look at death as it really is: an emptiness that brings me face to face with LIFE.

And yet, within my fragile, questioning heart I know that if I would ever dare get close enough to dying, to death, it would fall over into life.

O God of Lent, Your love has opened my eyes. It is my own pink-edged crosses that have broken my heart.

But your cross has saved me.

from Seasons of Your Heart
Macrina Wiederkehr

LAUGH