When Matt Hasselbeck, the Seattle Seahawks quarterback, was a Boston College junior, he volunteered to spend eight days in the missions of Jamaica during spring break.
The people’s poverty shocked him. But their faith, especially the faith of George McVee, a leper, inspired him.
George, a horribly disfigured leper, had no money, no nose, no feet or hands. Yet he daily thanked God for his blessings.
“My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” is the familiar cry of Jesus on the cross.
In our own lives, we may also sometimes feel abandoned, with hope seeming to disappear. As we cope with the serious illness of someone close to us. As we face economic challenges, perhaps even the loss of our job. In the gray loneliness that follows the death of a beloved wife or husband.
And yet, in the midst of our darkness, we remember that God did not abandon His beloved Son and the suffering of Good Friday transformed into the hope of our Lord’s Resurrection. God does not abandon us.
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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. |
On behalf of all the priests of the Diocese of Madison, and behalf of all my staff, I want to promise our sincere and continued Easter prayers, in this Resurrection season. Each one of you has our prayers for health, safety, and above all, deeper union with Christ. I beg you, too, to offer your Easter prayers for us, because each of us and our Church certainly always stand in need of prayer. I wanted to share with you here a few of the thoughts I offered at the Easter Vigil this year.
We celebrated Easter Sunday this year on April 4th — that day on which Christ was raised from the dead, the day which changed history forever. In some ways I had hoped to see some large signs and advertisements on Easter Sunday about how the Resurrection of Jesus Christ had happened and how we celebrated our new life on April 4. Instead, all the signs told me that April 3 was the launch of iPad! That tells me — and it should tell you — something significant about the mission that Jesus Christ places in our hands this Easter and everyday.
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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. |
I want to wish you all a very blessed Holy Triduum and a very happy Easter. May it be a joyful and prayerful time for you and your family, and may it provide a powerful experience with our Lord Jesus, risen from the dead.
We are called, each and every day, to invite people to meet Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. In a very real way, this is the mission of my episcopacy here — it is the stated mission of my staff, and, by extension, it is truly the mission of each of us here in the 11 counties of south-central Wisconsin.
In order, credibly, to invite our neighbors to meet Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, we have to have met Him. So these days of Holy Week and Easter should be a very special time for each of us, when we intensify that meeting which we are called to have with the risen Christ. The proper celebration of Holy Week and Easter has everything to do with the mission to which each of us, by nature of our Baptism, is called.
Dear brothers and sisters, rejoice!
In sadness we have come upon the tomb, only to find that the Lord has risen.
Dear Friends,
This last week, on Palm Sunday, we were presented with the “icon,” the image, of Jesus arriving in Jerusalem on a donkey, to hear the praises of the people, “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the Highest!”
Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the personal representative of our Holy Father, in his first address to the bishops of the United States, said to us, “Always remember that you are nothing but a donkey. But, it was the donkey who carried the Messiah toward his destiny.” This was reminiscent of the words of St. Josemaria. As we enter into Easter, through the very special celebrations of Holy Week, let us commit ourselves to be nothing but donkeys, bearing on our shoulders the Messiah of the Lord — not only at Easter time, but every blessed day.
