Missive (3/14)

 Dearest Brothers & Sisters in Christ,

We’ve hit Laetare Sunday, the (sort of) mid-point of Lent; a time to relax the Lenten disciplines for a day and get ready to pour on the coals as we hit the second half of Lent.  If you don’t feel like you’ve hit your Lenten stride yet, then relax a bit anyway and, while you’re relaxing, make a plan for how you’re going to hit that stride Monday morning.

The word “Laetare” is Latin for “REJOICE!”  This Sunday gets its name from the opening word of the introit, or, opening antiphon for this Mass: “Laetare, Ierúsalem: et convéntum fácite, omnes qui diligitis eam; which means: “Rejoice, O Jerusalem, and come together, all you who love her.”  The Jerusalem we love is, of course, heaven – the new Jerusalem.

This love for the new Jerusalem, for heaven, is our motivation for the Lenten disciplines we undertake.  It is also the motivation for the disciplines we extend throughout the rest of the year.  As the apostle, Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians (9:24-26): “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only receives the prize?  So run that you may obtain it.  Every athlete exercise self-control in all things.  They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.  We also see this motivation beautifully demonstrated in the “Song of Songs” from the Old Testament.

One of the first things our Lenten men’s group was asked to do was to think through and write down their motivation for undertaking the Exodus 40 Lenten program.  The designers of the program point out, rightly, that we can’t get to where we are going if we don’t clearly understand why we are undertaking this journey.  So it is for all of us – men, women, and children who follow Christ.  It is necessary that we understand our goal (the new Jerusalem – heaven) and also recognize that the journey there is not an easy one.  If it were, our blessed Mother would not have had to show the vision of hell to the three shepherd children at Fatima, there wouldn’t have been anything to show them!  All of those souls, so many that it seemed like a snow-storm to the children, would have been falling into heaven instead of hell.  So we see, the journey to heaven is not like “falling into something”, it is a steep climb, an arduous climb.

Let us then start afresh on Monday morning: entering into those Lenten disciplines like athletes training for a championship.  It will take giving some things up, hard work, and sometimes even facing ridicule: but imagine winning a prize that makes winning the Superbowl, the World Series, the Stanley Cup, the Ryder Cup, and every other prize there is seem like an afterthought.  That’s how good heaven is!  So let us rejoice in her today, and redouble our efforts to attain so great a prize tomorrow.  God has done His part, now we need to do ours.

Remember who (and Whose!) you are!