Love and Sorrow: Weekly Message for 03-26-2019

Dear Friends in Christ,

Holy Week, still a few weeks away, is the most liturgically rich week of the year, going all the way from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday. The somber sobriety of Lent is one of the ways we prepare for those special days in which we commemorate the most important event in human history: our redemption.

Lent is a time of love and sorrow. We love Our Lord especially these days because of all he has done for us, but we are also sorrowful and penitent for how poorly we have responded to that love. When we feel the strain of our Lenten resolutions we must remember the love that prompted them. We pray, fast, and give alms out of love for Our Lord, who has only experienced sorrow out of love for us. Yesterday we celebrated the Annunciation, which was also the commemoration of Our Lord’s Incarnation, the moment when he chose to assume human nature to redeem us through sorrow and suffering.

When a loved one suffers, we suffer, and sin is self-inflicted suffering, no matter how you try to rationalize it or package it. The sorrow Our Lord has endured for us in these holy days motivates us to pray, fast, and give…. out of love for him.

On Holy Thursday we’ll commemorate the institution of the sacrament of the Eucharist, but also the Lord’s command that we love one another. It’s a sublime moment of love and sorrow for Our Lord, the last earthly moment he celebrates with his closest disciples before the dark night of the Passion, and, like a good friend saying goodbye, he has a lot to say and little time to say it.

Fr. John Bartunek has prepared a Lenten retreat guide that can help your sorrow become a deeper love for Our Lord by meditating on the Last Supper: Teacher and Lord: a Lenten Retreat Guide on the Last Supper.

May Our Lord continue to help you go from sorrow to a deeper love for him in this Lenten season.

Father Nikola Derpich, L.C.
fr.nikola@rcspirituality.org