Bulletin column from March 14, 2021

Dear Friends at Saint Frances Cabrini Parish and Saint Mary’s Immaculate Conception Parish: Praised be Jesus Christ!

This weekend as we cross the midpoint of our Lenten journey with Laetare Sunday it is an opportune time to step back for a moment and consider the Church’s seasonal calendar from a bigger picture perspective. Doing so helps to underscore the importance, the meaning, and the purpose of the time of the year that we are passing through.

The most important liturgical days of the entire year serve to annually call to mind and re-live the most important events in the entire history of the world. These events would be the Lord’s Last Supper, his betrayal, his handing over to his enemies, his suffering, his execution on the Cross, his burial in the earth, and his rising from the dead on the third day in a whole new mode of being. These are real historical events that took place in Jerusalem on a Thursday evening through the following Sunday, and they were experienced by a man who Christians understand to also be the living God. That means that these events have eternal significance and stand outside of time so that they may be experienced over and over again through ritual until the end of time. The Church herself is formed and re-formed around these events. The liturgical season of the Triduum (the Three Days) with all of its rich Holy Thursday through Easter Sunday rituals is given to us each year to bring us into direct contact with these events for the purpose of our transformation. Therefore, they are the most important days of the year, every single year without exception and take priority over every single facet of our lives, regardless of our schedules.

So important are these sacred days that the Church in her wisdom adds two seasons on either side of them so that we can adequately celebrate them and take in their meaning. For six weeks leading up to the Triduum the entire Church makes her way through Lent. The annual observance of the season with its core customs of added prayers, fasting, and works of charity is meant to conform us more closely to the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ so that we can be healed and renewed. It is time of re-dedication to God and a time to marvel at his mercy. It is a time to meditate upon the identity of our baptism wherein we first underwent dying and rising, beginning a pattern of sacrifice and renewal in grace that continues for our whole earthly lives. In this way the baptized faithful prepare to re-live Christ’s death and resurrection, and those anticipating baptism prepare for their sacraments. These six weeks of preparation are essential for the authentic observance of the Triduum.

For seven weeks after Easter Sunday, the Church celebrates the Easter Season. We do so to drink in fully all the power and implications of what we have just passed through during the Triduum. A core lesson that the Easter Season reinforces at every turn, all across the seven weeks, is the reality that Christ is fully alive in and through his Mystical Body, the Church. The Word of God and the Sacraments give rise to the community of believers that lives on until the end of time, in which the Risen Christ is encountered and death is conquered. As Christ is alive, we too are alive to the extent that we allow ourselves to be joined to him. The Easter Season concludes with Pentecost when we rejoice in the power of the Holy Spirit that is unleashed in the world now that the Son of Man’s death and resurrection have allowed the human race the full capacity to receive the Spirit.

Collectively these seasons make up nearly 14 weeks of the year, every year, or just over a quarter of our year. They occupy our time and energy from roughly mid-February through late May every single year which in our part of the world coincides beautifully with the Spring of the year. That is a very large block of time and the long run of weeks underscores how important the saving events of the Triduum are to us in the past, present, and the future.

Observing these fourteen weeks of liturgical life every single year is essential to forming us in our identity as Christians both as individuals and also as an entire body of believers. It is an essential way that the presence of Christ is made manifest in the world. For these reasons, and many more, we are wise to engage all of these weeks with our fullest energy, presence, and devotion.