Sunday, April 6, was a day of celebration. The Latin American Mission Program (LAMP) celebrated 50 years of work and bringing people closer to God with a Mass and dinner at the Bishop O’Connor Center in Madison.
Month: April 2014
Divine Mercy Sunday to be celebrated on April 27
Blessed John Paul II declared in the Great Jubilee Year 2000 that throughout the universal Church, the Sunday after Easter will be known as Divine Mercy Sunday.
Faith opportunities for women
Diocesan convention
BARABOO — Join Catholic women from the diocese to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Madison Diocesan Council of Catholic Women (MDCCW) and “Find Grace through Faith, Trust, & Patience” at the annual MDCCW convention.
The Sauk Vicariate will host this event, beginning the afternoon of Tuesday, May 20, and continuing the next day at the Clarion Hotel & Convention Center, 626 Hwy. 12, Baraboo.
All time belongs to Him
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| This column is the bishop’s communication with the faithful of the Diocese of Madison. Any wider circulation reaches beyond the intention of the bishop. |
Dear Friends,
It is always strange to prepare a column for this issue of the Catholic Herald.
As I write, it is Monday and we’ve just entered into Holy Week. When this issue arrives at your homes, it will most likely be Holy Thursday, and yet this will also serve as the “Easter issue.”
We’ve just experienced Palm Sunday, when we rejoiced and sang “Hosanna!” as Jesus rode triumphantly into Jerusalem.
So should I reflect upon those moments of worldly glory? Should I rejoice with all the gusto of Easter, knowing that you may read this in the glow of those days? Or, should I consider the darkness of Christ’s passion and death, bearing in mind that you may read this column on Holy Thursday or Good Friday?
Of course it wouldn’t be the end of the world to do any of this, and the point is not really the tension of writing this column.
We live in a world of tension
I reflect upon it though, because it’s actually the tension in which we live day-in and day-out.
For us, Christ’s life, His passion, His death, and His raising to new life all are present at once.
A Good Friday prayer for our suffering world
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By prayerfully meditating before a crucifix, one can see and begin to understand, the ultimate result of sin.
The Romans’ sins, the Jews’ sins, our sins nailed our Lord Jesus to the cross. The cost of sin is death. Our sins killed the Son of God. Our sins crucified our loving Lord. And our sins continue his suffering passion.
Living the paschal mystery with hope
Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Christ and is the most important feast of the Church.
At Easter we renew our faith and welcome new members into the Church.
It is the Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil) that is the high point of the Church year.
Paschal mystery
Easter is the fulfillment of the paschal mystery — the suffering, death, and rising of Jesus. This mystery is not a one-time historical event. As members of the body of Christ, we live this mystery throughout our lives.
We entered the paschal mystery at baptism. We were baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. This means that we share in Christ’s suffering, death, and rising throughout our lives.
The paschal mystery assures us that the “pain and dying” we experience in our daily lives ultimately leads to resurrection.
It is our Christian belief that God can and does bring good out of evil and suffering.
Jesus’ life is the greatest example of this. God did not leave Jesus in his pain. God raised him from the dead. Death had no power over him.
The ‘zealot’ versus the real Jesus
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When I saw that Reza Aslan’s portrait of Jesus, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, had risen to number one on the New York Times bestseller list, I must confess, I was both disappointed and puzzled.
For the reductionistic and debunking approach that Aslan employs has been tried by dozens of commentators for at least the past 300 years, and the debunkers have been themselves debunked over and over again by serious scholars of the historical Jesus.
Aslan’s portrayal of the ‘zealot’
The Jesus that Aslan wants to present is the “zealot,” the Jewish insurrectionist intent upon challenging the Temple establishment in Jerusalem and the Roman military power that dominated Israel.
His principle justification for this reading is that religiously motivated revolutionaries were indeed thick on the ground in the Palestine of Jesus’ time; that Jesus claimed to be ushering in a new Kingdom of God; and that he ended up dying the death typically meted out to rabble-rousers who posed a threat to Roman authority.
Can we watch an hour? Help preserve the holy places
It always makes me sad to read the Scripture passages telling how the apostles fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane just before Jesus’ arrest — not only once, but three times!
Jesus says to them, “Could you not watch one hour with me” (Mt. 26:40)? It doesn’t seem like much to ask of his disciples — who had traveled with him and were the primary teachers of his message — to stay awake by his side. However, the apostles were human. Jesus recognized their humanity when he added, “The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Unfortunately many of us aren’t always being vigilant about what is happening around us, especially when it comes to things that are impacting our faith and our Church.
Seeing Easter through children’s eyes
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Seeing Easter through children’s eyes can open windows of wonder and love that we busy adults sometimes keep closed.
A mother experienced this when she overheard Danny, her five-year-old son, talk with his friend Jeremy whose father recently died.
“Where did your dad go when he died?” asked Danny.
“My mom said that he went to Heaven,” replied Jeremy.
“What’s Heaven?” asked Danny.
Durward’s Glen to host gala on May 3
BARABOO — The staff and volunteers of Durward’s Glen invite the public to join them at the “Gala for The Glen” event from 6 to 10 p.m. on Saturday, May 3, at the Baraboo Arts Banquet Hall.
This year’s event will be bigger and better than ever, with fine food and wine, dancing to the Big Band sounds of the Hal Edwards Orchestra, door prizes, and a silent auction.