During this year's Holy Week, most of us will be worshipping the Holy Trinity's love for us with other Christians, perhaps on Maundy Thursday evening, Good Friday, within an Easter Vigil, and during The Feast of the Resurrection. As we prepare for and celebrate Easter, let's be sure to remember one another in our intercessions, asking God to draw each one of us closer in love to Him, closer in love to the holy catholic Church, closer in love to our fellow parishioners, closer in love to members of our families, closer in love to our neighbors--and especially closer in love to those who deperately need the love of God in Christ: those who are suffering in war, those in prisons, our enemies, those who are undergoing injustice, widows, widowers, and orphans, the homeless, and the poor of the world. Let us ask God that our lives--buried and risen with Christ in baptism, nurtured by the Gospel, shaped by the prayers and readings of the Daily Office, and fed by the Presence of Christ in Holy Communion--may bring healing and new life to all whom we meet in the days and weeks to come.

My office last evening gave me this reading from the Catechetical Lectures (XX.5) of Cyril of Jerusalem (c. 315-386):

O strange and wonderful event! We were not really put to death, we were not really buried, we were not really crucified, we were not really brought back to life. But, even the imitation is symbolic [in the best sense of the word; that is, the imitation "intimately connects us to that profound Event'"], the salvation is very real! Christ was truly crucified, truly buried, truly raised up. And all this was given to us by grace in order that we might share his sufferings by imitating them, and thus truly obtain salvation. How vast God's love for men! Christ had his utterly pure hands pierced by the nails, he suffered; and yet it is to me, who share in his sufferings without suffering or experiencing pain, that he give the grace of salvation.

May our Lord Jesus drench you in His dying love even as He also shows you how to die, urging you to come to His new life.

And, O yes, remember: on the Thursday after Easter we meet at Stephen Locke's home. You'll receive a reminder a day or two after Easter Sunday.