My Dear Folk,

We now enter upon the most holy time of the year; we now hold before ourselves the most central events in our Lord’s life.  As God brought to completion His plan for our salvation, our Lord Jesus literally walked the way of the cross. Like the Palm Sunday crowd, it is so easy to cheer on the Messiah at His triumphal entry to the Holy City.  That costs us very little. But it is a very different thing to stand with Him when He is betrayed in the Garden, as He is falsely accused before the Sanhedrin and again before Pilate, while He is mocked and beaten by the Roman soldiers, while He bears the judgement of all mankind upon the cross.  Dying with Christ is precisely what every Christian is called to do. Yet as St. Paul encourages us, “For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

The wisdom of the Catholic tradition has given us these powerful and dramatic services for Holy Week.  They are tools to help us comprehend the great mystery of our salvation. They hold before us the love of God made manifest in the most concrete of ways.  They give us the opportunity to reflect on our willful turning away from God, the waste and devastation which result in our lives. They give us the chance to renew our devotion to Him, to recapture the joy of our faith.  But it is a journey. And we must not seek to avoid the difficult parts of the road. We cannot simply wish ourselves to be at the end, at the empty tomb of Easter. We must walk the way of the cross with our Lord. There is no resurrection without death; there is no Easter victory without Good Friday’s cross.

As a community of faith we will take this journey together.  We will pray. We will worship. We will be nourished by His Most Precious Body and Blood.  We will marvel at what God has done for us – even while we were yet estranged from Him. And we will seek God’s grace that we may follow Him more and more all the days of our lives.

The schedule of service for Holy Week is enclosed with this letter.  You will also find an envelope for Easter flowers. You may put the envelope in the offering plate or send it to the church office.  To have names included in the Easter bulletin, they must be received in the church office by Wednesday noon of Holy Week.

 

Yours,

Michael J. Godderz ✠

(Ruth Godderz)