Dear Friends,
It is so surreal. I can’t believe we will be living what looks like a lengthy LENT, an endless desert experience unable to go to Mass and receive our Lord in Holy Communion.
Despite this grim situation that no one saw coming, we can still make the best use of our time to stay connected in prayer. We pray daily at Mass what it is that makes us real people of faith: “It is our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal God.” No matter where we are, we are truly who we are as humans only if we continue to pay our heart’s homage to our Lord. Although this deeply held belief is supremely expressed at Mass, we can still do what is best within our given situation by setting aside some quality time which indicates our desire to truly give thanks to our God.
Spending time in prayer, giving thanks to God for our lives, offering up our joys and sufferings to the Lord, is not everyone’s expertise. Some of us might be challenged to find the motivation or the creativity to be praying at a uniquely challenging time such as this when we are sheltered in place, stuck at home for more days than we would have desired. Hence, I request you to send us a video/photo of how you pray with the sole aim of helping, inspiring, motivating others to do so. We will call this initiative “Inspire to Pray”. Your video should be one minute or under. You just need to say how you pray possibly showing some prayerful decorations that you have made at home. I am sure your way of praying might inspire others to pray and wouldn’t that be wonderful. The news channels are filled with videos of people trying different things to beat the boredom of staying at home such as, singing, dancing, playing, gardening, cooking, and art work etc. We need some of us to show how prayer can help us to preserve our relationship with the Lord who will certainly bring some good out of this sinister virus.
Today we celebrate Palm Sunday when we commemorate our Lord’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Palm Sunday of the Passion of the Lord inaugurates the Holy Week during which the saving mysteries of our salvation will be remembered, reenacted, and relived as they took place at a specific time, in a specific place. What is even more fascinating about this Holy Week and more specifically the celebration of the Sacred Paschal Triduum is that those faith anchoring events that took place in a specific time and place passes over into the mystery of our liturgical celebrations. Nathan Mitchell, in his article “The Three Days of Pascha,” brings out the essence of these celebrations thus: “What the pascal triduum actually celebrates is mystery, not history; anamnesis, not mimesis. The liturgies of these days do not “take us back” to the upper room or the path to calvary. Their ultimate purpose is not to retrace or relive the last hours of Jesus’ life- nor to catch sight of him emerging from the tomb at Easter’s dawning. They celebrate not what once happened to Jesus but what is now happening among us as a people called to conversion, gathering in faith, and gifted with the spirit of holiness. They celebrate God’s taking possession of our hearts at their deepest core, recreating us as a new human community broken like bread for the world’s life- a community rich in compassion, steadfast in hope, and fearless in the search for justice and peace.”
Yes, these holy days, will celebrate God’s taking possession of our hearts at their deepest core, recreating us as a new human community, even as we are deeply afflicted by this unknown, unexplainable, unprecedented, unforeseen coronavirus depriving us from gathering as people of faith to celebrate what is our core experience. Yet the action of God will continue to recreate us as a new human community shattering our illusions that we are self-sufficient. Yet even this time of isolation, this new found “Alone together” experience will make of us a community rich in compassion, steadfast in hope and fearless in the search for justice and peace.
With love,
Fr. John Britto Antony C.S.C.