O God, who through thine only-begotten Son didst on this day overcome death and open unto us the gates of everlasting life: prosper with thine aid the desires which thou didst anticipate with thine inspiration. Through the same Lord. Amen. - Collect
This past Thursday, we gathered with a full Cathedral of faithful to join our Bishop and priests for the annual Chrism Mass.
Dearest Friends in Christ,
Ave Regina Caelorum! Hail, Queen of Heaven! This newsletter will reach you and your families just as we are about to celebrate the most sacred and grace-filled days of the Liturgical Year. The days of Holy Week and Easter call each of us to be united to Christ in the Paschal Mystery through the Sacred Liturgy. There is no better way to do this than to keep company with Mary – to strive to see each of Jesus’ redemptive acts through her eyes while pondering them with her in our hearts. At the gateway of Holy Week stands Palm Sunday. Holy Mother Church celebrates with triumphant joy Christ's Kingship, and simultaneously calls to mind the mystery of His reign on the Cross. From her we receive the blessed palms, carrying them in procession as a proclamation of our readiness to die and for Christ, that dying with Him we may also rise with Him. Concerning this mystery, Fr. Pius Parsch writes: "We cannot separate the Cross from the resurrection; they belong together. They belong together, too, in the life of the Christian, a life of grace which consists in conforming to “the likeness of Christ’s death and resurrection”.
On the First Saturday of April, Our Lady of Grace Sodality celebrated the consecration of one of the Sodalists.
Everything around us urges us to mourn. The images of the saints, the very crucifix on our altar, are veiled from our sight. The Church is oppressed with grief. During the first four weeks of Lent, she compassionated her Jesus fasting in the desert; His coming sufferings and crucifixion and death are what now fill her with anguish. We read in to-day’s Gospel, that the Jews threaten to stone the Son of God as a blasphemer: but His hour is not yet come. He is obliged to flee and hide Himself.
“Live joyfully; our Lord looks down upon you, and looks upon you with love...” - St. Francis de Sales
Evangelization with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy, as part of our daily concern to spread goodness. The Church evangelizes and is herself evangelized through the beauty of the liturgy, which is both a celebration of the task of evangelization and the source of her renewed self-giving. - Evangelii Gaudium, 24 According to the calendar, today is officially the first day of spring. Be that as it may be, it has felt like spring in Santa Rosa for a while and we have treated it as such.
"How poor a life in which there is not thirst. Craving and longing, and the restlessness which goes with them are a sort of consolation in themselves, and a hint of likeness with Him; and it is craving and longing, more than anything else, which makes the difference between one's good and bad days." - from Notes of a Meditation by Mother Janet Stuart
|
Categories
All
Archives
March 2024
|