March 2008
in
From Fr. Frank
We hear the phrase “Paschal Mystery” at many Eucharistic celebrations, a term rich in meaning and tradition. At every Passover celebration, a lamb must be sacrificed in reparation of the sins of the people. In John’s gospel, Jesus is crucified at the “third hour”, the time at which the priests began to slaughter the Passover lambs in the temple. Jesus has become the sacrificial lamb…the “lamb of God” who takes away the sins of the world. But the “paschal mystery” reaches its fulfillment in the resurrection, when Jesus conquered the reality we all fear: death. The bodily resurrection of Jesus is our true and final destiny.
As we enter the final weeks of Lent, we need to remember that we, ourselves, are living this paschal mystery. The moment we were baptized, we entered the paschal mystery…the dying and rising of Christ, which will only be complete when we breath our last. Unless we experience our lives as dying and rising with Jesus, we will be mere spectators in a great drama that truly has no effect on our lives. But when we see all the little deaths we experience in life: our failures, our broken relationships, the many illnesses, our loneliness, the inner void, the death of loved ones, our own growing older, lost dreams…as being a part of the death of Jesus and when we experience the very resurrection of Jesus in our inner resolve to move on in life, to find new hope and promise, to forge new relationships and accept the reality that our true home is beyond the gateway of death into the fullness of eternal life…then we are living the “paschal mystery”.
The goal of this Lent at St. Eulalia’s is to witness six children being baptized into the dying and rising of Jesus in the waters of baptism at the Easter Vigil, and to teach them through our own witness that their lives are forever being enveloped and transformed in this great paschal mystery of Christ.
