“What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.

 

Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam’s son.

 

The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

 

‘I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise.

 

‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.

 

‘For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form; that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden.

 

‘Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image.

 

‘See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one.

 

`I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.

 

‘But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God.

 

“The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages.”

 

A reading from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

 

Prayer

 

Almighty, ever-living God, whose Only-begotten Son descended to the realm of the dead, and rose from there to glory, grant that your faithful people, who were buried with him in baptism, may, by his resurrection, obtain eternal life.

(We make our prayer) through our Lord.

(Through Christ our Lord.)

 

Jesus knew that he had now finished his work. And in order to make the Scriptures come true, he said, “I am thirsty!”  A jar of cheap wine was there. Someone then soaked a sponge with the wine and held it up to Jesus’ mouth on the stem of a hyssop plant.  After Jesus drank the wine, he said, “Everything is done!” He bowed his head and died.

 

A Spear Is Stuck in Jesus’ Side

The next day would be both a Sabbath and the Passover. It was a special day for the Jewish people, and they did not want the bodies to stay on the crosses during that day. So they asked Pilate to break the men’s legs and take their bodies down.  The soldiers first broke the legs of the other two men who were nailed there.  But when they came to Jesus, they saw that he was already dead, and they did not break his legs.

 

One of the soldiers stuck his spear into Jesus’ side, and blood and water came out.  We know this is true, because it was told by someone who saw it happen. Now you can have faith too.  All this happened so that the Scriptures would come true, which say, “No bone of his body will be broken” and, “They will see the one in whose side they stuck a spear.”

The Sacred Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter.

By Deacon Keith Fournier

 

“Beginning with the Easter Triduum as its source of light, the new age of the Resurrection fills the whole liturgical year with its brilliance. Gradually, on either side of this source, the year is transfigured by the liturgy” (Catechism of the Catholic Church) .

 

 

 

The Liturgical year in the words of Monsignor Peter Elliott ‘. transforms our time into a sacrament of eternity.’  Let us enter fully into the Sacred Triduum Liturgies.

The Liturgical year in the words of Monsignor Peter Elliott “. transforms our time into a sacrament of eternity.” Let us enter fully into the Sacred Triduum Liturgies.

 

The Easter Triduum begins with the Vigil of Holy Thursday. It marks the end of the forty days of Lent and the beginning of the three-day celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil/Easter Sunday. The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council reminded us of the extraordinary significance of the Triduum : “Christ redeemed us all and gave perfect glory to God principally through his paschal mystery: dying he destroyed our death and rising he restored our life. Therefore the Easter Triduum of the passion and resurrection of Christ is the culmination of the entire liturgical year.” (General Norms for the Liturgical Year and the Calendar, # 18)

 

These last Forty Days were a time of preparation for these great Three days, which is what Triduum means. These three days lead us to an empty tomb and an Octave, eight days, of celebrating the Resurrection. They also introduce an entire liturgical season, the Easter Season, which lasts for Fifty days until Pentecost.

 

 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church instructs us: “Beginning with the Easter Triduum as its source of light, the new age of the Resurrection fills the whole liturgical year with its brilliance. Gradually, on either side of this source, the year is transfigured by the liturgy. It really is a “year of the Lord’s favor.” The economy of salvation is at work within the framework of time, but since its fulfillment in the Passover of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the culmination of history is anticipated “as a foretaste,” and the kingdom of God enters into our time.

 

“Therefore Easter is not simply one feast among others, but the “Feast of feasts,” the “Solemnity of solemnities,” just as the Eucharist is the “Sacrament of sacraments” (the Great Sacrament). St. Athanasius calls Easter “the Great Sunday” and the Eastern Churches call Holy Week “the Great Week.” The mystery of the Resurrection, in which Christ crushed death, permeates with its powerful energy our old time, until all is subjected to him.” (CCC #1168, 1169)

 

There is no better book to assist Bishops, Priests, Deacons, and lay men and women charged with the task of preparing truly good liturgies in the Modern Roman Rite than Monsignor Peter J. Elliotts “Ceremonies of the Liturgical Year.” Monsignor Elliott writes in his Introduction:”Christians understand time in a different way from other people because of the Liturgical Year. We are drawn into a cycle that can become such a part of our lives that it determines how we understand the structure of each passing year. In the mind of the Christian, each passing year takes shape, not so much around the cycle of natural seasons, the financial or sporting year or academic semesters, but around the feasts, fasts and seasons of the Catholic Church. Without thinking much about it, from early childhood, we gradually learn to see time itself, past, present and future, in a new way. All of the great moments of the Liturgical Year look back to the salvific events of Jesus Christ, the Lord of History.

 

“Those events are made present here and now as offers of grace. This week is Holy not only because of what we remember but because of what it can accomplish within each one of us as we give our voluntary “Yes” to its invitation. To put it another way, in Christ time takes on a sacramental dimension. The Liturgical Year bears this sacramental quality of memorial, actuation and prophecy.

 

“Time becomes a re-enactment of Christ’s saving events, His being born in our flesh, His dying and rising for us in that human flesh. Time thus becomes a pressing sign of salvation, the “day of the Lord”, His ever present “hour of salvation”, the kairos. Time on earth then becomes our pilgrimage through and beyond death toward the future Kingdom. The Liturgical Year is best understood both in its origins and current form in the way we experience time: in the light of the past, present and future. .

 

“The Liturgical Year thus suggests the sovereignty of the grace of Christ. We say that we “follow” or “observe” the Liturgical Year, but this Year of Grace also carries us along. Once we enter it faithfully we must allow it to determine the shape of our daily lives. It sets up a series of “appointments” with the Lord. We know there are set days, moments, occasions when He expects us. Within this framework of obligation, duty and covenant, we are part of something greater than ourselves.

 

 

“We can detect a sense of being sustained or borne forward by the power and pace of a sacred cycle that is beyond our control. It will run its course whether we like it or not. This should give us an awareness of the divine dimension of the Liturgical Year as an expression the power and authority of Jesus who is the Lord of History. As the blessing of the Paschal Candle recalls: “.all time belongs to Him and all the ages”. The sacred cycle thus becomes a sacrament of God’s time. Salvation history is among us here and now… “my time” rests in God’s hands (and) is a call to trust, to faith, to letting go of self.”

 

The real question is not whether we will mark time but how we will do so? For the Christian time is not meant to be a tyrant ruling over us with impunity. Rather, it is a teacher, inviting and instructing us to choose to enter more fully into our relationship with the Lord and in Him with one another for the world. Time is not our enemy, but our friend. It is a part of the redemptive loving plan of a timeless God who, in His Son, the Timeless One, came into time to transform it from within.

 

The Lord gives us time as a gift and intends it to become a field of choice and a path to holiness in this life and the window into life eternal. Through time the Lord offers us the privilege of discovering His plan for our own life pilgrimage. Through time He invites us to participate in His ongoing redemptive plan, through His Son Jesus Christ who has been raised, by living in the full communion of His Church which is the seed of the kingdom. That redemptive plan will find its final fulfillment in the recreation of the entire cosmos in Christ. Time is the road along which this loving plan of redemption and re-creation proceeds.

 

At the very epicenter of our Liturgical Calendar is the great Three days we celebrate, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the Resurrection of the Lord, the Sacred Triduum. Good Liturgy is not simply a re-enactment of something that happened over 2000 years ago but an actual participation in the events themselves through living faith. These events are outside of time and made present in our Liturgical celebrations and in our reception of the Sacraments. Just as every Mass/Divine Liturgy is an invitation to enter into the sacrifice of Calvary which occurred once and for all.

 

 

We will soon attend the Last Supper and receive the gift of the Holy Eucharist, the Body, Blood Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. We will enter into the deep meaning of the Holy Priesthood. We will be invited to pour ourselves out like the water in the basins used to wash feet on Holy Thursday. We will be asked with the disciples in the Gospel accounts we will hear proclaimed to watch with the Lord. We will be invited to enter with Him into his anguish by imitating His Holy surrender in his Sacred Humanity in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Through the stark and solemn Liturgy of the Friday we call “Good”, we will stand at the Altar of the Cross where heaven is rejoined to earth and earth to heaven, along with the Mother of the Lord. We will enter into the moment that forever changed – and still changes – all human History, the great self gift of the Son of God who did for us what we could never do for ourselves by in the words of the ancient Exultet, “trampling on death by death”. We will wait at the tomb and witness the Glory of the Resurrection and the beginning of the New Creation.

 

The Liturgical year in the words of Monsignor Peter Elliott “. transforms our time into a sacrament of eternity.”  Let us enter fully into the Sacred Triduum Liturgies. The Great Three Days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Invite Us into Heart of the Mystery of Faith. Let it Begin!

Motivated by my biannual, ironclad, inflexible and completely self-imposed, imaginary deadline, I was out just after sunrise this morning washing my windows. Since we got these replacement windows I wash them twice a year, before Christmas decorations go on and before Easter. They look sparkly and enhance neighbor supervision wonderfully.
The other more private chore is the biannual washing of the china and its’ cabinet. It’s a big job, a picky job and even a dangerous job but boy is it worth it. I missed the pre-Christmas wash as who cares what your china looks like in its’ den of iniquity, when you’re in Jamaica? Now that I’ve rearranged the display for more variety of teacups and saucers and less mind-numbing repetition of a lovely pattern of old Lennox. I go in just to turn on the little light and gaze on the wondrous display. Most men don’t understand china cabinets and their draw, Dan does. He loves all that is elevated and fancy my ‘fancy Dan’ loves anything that pleases me and allows him to live in the manner to which he’s become accustomed.
Normally I avoid china cabinets like the plague, circumventing rooms that would be a good cut-through to save me the accursed rattle. This cabinet is expertly leveled and installed by my German perfectionist and we live on a slab so no give to the floors and thus no rattle. My daughters have absolutely no idea how lucky they are not having to worry about treading like bigfoot on their path to the laundry room.
I love china and teacups. Momma never had china until later in life and I have no memories associated with it. She did have 4 Red Rose Tea promotional teacups stashed above the fridge in an amazingly greasy cabinet (Momma fried stuff and the vent on the wall was by that cabinet, also Dad had a fully functional machine shop in the basement for his hobby jobs).

When Louis and Anne Roche, Momma and Dad’s childless friends from their single days, would drop over unexpected but very welcome, Mary Lou and I would be turned loose to get ‘the tea.’ We’d get a chair, scale the counter, reach the cabinet and bring down with great care those 4 cups and saucers. Momma would slip Mary Lou a five and whisper ‘go get a sweet,’ the most popular and scarce food group. Mary would run to Andy’s, the corner store, to get something, packaged Danishes mostly and I would wash off the protective covering of bacon fat from the teacups. How we enjoyed getting the ‘tea on’ for these dear and very exotic friends of our parents. They were out for an entertaining ride and possibly to get a taste of what could have been before running back to their orderly life.
The stuff in a house only has meaning if it is used. I use my stuff, the good china every big holiday so my girls will have memories associated with those old-fashioned carnations on a field of Lennox ivory and gold. The teacups are prominently displayed now in the china cabinet, a promotion from their previous perch in my kitchen bookcase and their safe retreat above the refrigerator in Momma’s tiny kitchen on Roger’s Drive. I’m so blessed by these memories and the leisure to enjoy the refined things in life, that is when I’m not under some crazed deadline.

by Theresa Jay Julian 

To see photos from the Blessing Day Click here:

Blessing Day March 29, 2017

 

At 2 PM today, Wednesday March 29, Bishop Richard Grecco will bless the new Our Lady of Hope Retreat Centre.

There will be photos.

LUKE 1:26-38

 

 

Friends, our Gospel today introduces the most important Advent personage: Mary, the Mother of God. The Church Fathers often made a connection between Eve, the mother of all the living, and Mary, the Mother of God and Mother of the Church. In fact, they saw her as “the new Eve,” the one who undid the damage done by Eve.

 

The angel’s greeting to Mary is important here: “Hail Mary, full of grace.” Mary is greeted as someone who is able to accept gifts. Eve and Adam grasped; Mary is ready to receive. And Mary’s reply is also significant: “How is this possible, for I do not know man?” There is nothing cowed about Mary.

 

The angel explains to Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…” At the heart of the spiritual life is the conviction that your life is not about you. The real spiritual life is about allowing oneself to be overwhelmed by the one who loves us. Mary is someone who is ready for the impossible, and this makes her the paradigm of discipleship. “Let it be done to me according to thy word.” That’s an acquiescence to adventure.

— Bishop Robert Baron, Los Angeles, California 

https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-francis-style-of-prayer/

We have two St. Patrick’s Churches here in the Diocese of Charlottetown, the older is in Grand River a lovely yellow wooden building in a magnificent water setting.

The second is in Fort Augustus, a prominent brick building on a hill that can be seen from great distances.

God bless our ancestors who built these houses of worship and God bless all those who worship in them today and into the future.