Fr. Don’s Weekly Letter ~ 9 March 2025

Dear Good People of Saint Bernadette,

Now that we have begun the season of Lent, I thought I would offer to you a perspective of the season that might be a little different from they way you have approached Lent in the past.

True, it is a penitential season: we do penance to make amends for the sins we have committed. We often use the word reparation -- a repairing or healing of the disorder we have caused in our own lives, the way we have impacted others, been unfaithful or indifferent to God, and his creation.

But this was not the origin of the season of Lent, it is what it became around the time of the middle ages when there was a growing obsession with sin itself and who we were becoming. We were not good people who did bad things, but just bad people. The Reformation took place, in part, because the Catholic Church was literally telling people they could buy their way out of hell through the Church. The divisions in Christianity which came later were often driven by different leaders outdoing each other over just how unsalvageable humanity was.

The ancient feast of the Pasch, or Easter, is the day of resurrection. It was the morning that the Church observed Jesus’ rising from the dead and the fullness of our hope. It was always the day of baptism as people converted from non-Christianity to be received into the Body of Christ. The Church celebrated it not only in one day, but grew into a series of days not really to reenact the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus, but to actively, ritually remember it. It is the seamless transformation of the Passover given to Moses by God as a feast forever, given new fullness and meaning as Christ becomes the paschal lamb that delivers us from death by his own sacrifice.

The triduum, the three days of Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Vigil/Day expanded as a time for preparation for those who were to be baptized. See the emphasis on preparation: the saving rites that deliver us were yet to come. It is only afterward that we turn it into a penitential time because we have acknowledged that
we have been unfaithful to God’s saving act.

So, those who had come into the Church in previous years soon began to seek a longer time to “put things in order” for the celebration of baptism at the Easter Vigil, when each year the Church renews those baptismal promises which were made in the past. For most of us, those promises were made for us as infants or children by our parents and godparents. We must own them more each year we are alive.

The Church already had, in the blending of Judaism and Christianity, the feast of Pentecost. The coming of the Holy Spirit 50 days after the resurrection, 10 days after the ascension of Jesus into heaven, seemed like a good development. The Church has always like symmetry in her celebrations and this is the classic example. The 40 days up to the ascension and the significance of the number 40 (years wandering in the desert being prepared by God for the promised land, Jesus’ own post-baptismal 40 days in the desert preparing for his public life, the purification of the world by the great flood’s 40 days and nights, the 40 days that Moses spent on Mount Sinai receiving the Torah), 40 being the number in the Bible and Talmud representing change, renewal and transformation made 40 days of preparation before the Triduum the perfect solution. We got Lent.

The season of Lent, then, is for those coming into the Church either by baptism or profession of faith the time of proximate preparation. You will see at Mass different celebrations. The parish Rite of Sending of catechumens Saturday, March 8 to the Rite of Election with Bishop Burbidge on Sunday, March 9. The Penitential Rite for those already baptized on the second Sunday of Lent (9am) for candidates to prepare for their profession of faith. The scrutinies on the third (Vigil 5pm), fourth (9am), and fifth (11am) Sundays of Lent, when the assembly prays over catechumens to open their hearts to fully receive the grace of the sacraments of initiation.

Not so much reparation as preparation: so much more than just giving something up out of sorrow for sin, it is a conscious walking into the new light of Jesus’ resurrection that brings us to life.

The Lord be with you.