Palm Sunday
✠ The Bishop’s Corner ✠
Holy Week’s golden gateway opens today. The fragrant palms, the victorious cries and even the donkey bid us all to enter in. But only the humble, like the donkey, persevere. Humiliation, betrayal, denial of course, await us on the way. “The week,” Holy Week, leads us to Calvary. First, the Cenacle assures the Passion’s prolongation until the end of time in the Mass. Then comes the Agony, the Holy Face assaulted with the Traitor’s kiss, and each act of those terrible three days, lovingly recalled, and “repaired,” and made present in the Sacred Liturgy. Later, He will rise again. For now, we must go and die with Him.
Nature here burst into bloom for Thursday, the Annunciation. (The Golden Forsythia bloomed twice this season.) Emmanuel, God, is with us ever since Gabriel’s greeting and Mary’s assent. Friday gave us the price paid, however: The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin. We adored, and prayed those days, again for our country.
Friday week was St. Joseph’s Day, and the Fathers report a most successful feast. Like Our Lord during His earthly life, you “came up to the feast.” The faithful enjoyed a wonderful Italian feast twice that week: For St. Patrick and St. Joseph. May St. Joseph inspire you to be with Jesus and Mary these days, these greatest days of the year.
Fr. Lehtoranta has departed for Milwaukee, and also on Friday our “Holy Week seminarian,” Mr. Thomas Ojeka, arrived to assist us. On Wednesday we had the unusual and very touching “Mass of the Angels” for infant Owen Zver, who died so young, but first was reborn for Heaven in Baptism. The peal of bells reminds us that we have a new saint. His uncle Fr. Timothy Geckle came here from Arkansas to assist at the funeral. Like Holy Week itself, it was a sad but glorious affair.
I want to thank in advance those who will come to help these holy days. Some have already started. (Some never stop!) God bless and reward you all. Ian Ford’s crew is fixing up the outdoors of the church, and others are working within, or at the altar. Each year we purchase and pour out over Christ’s feet the perfume of many “man hours” of loving labor. All for the greater honor and glory of God!
An early and intense Spring, with every tree and plant suddenly in bloom, means a beautiful outdoors, but a fairly miserable time for the allergy afflicted. All the clergy have been hit with sneezing that leads to wheezing and a raspy cough. Spring Fever. You feel as though you did have a fever, as though one of the temperature guns the guards and the goons are always aiming at you would yield a high reading. But no. It took me a long time to figure out, on my own, that it’s simply allergies which mimic a cold or a flu. Just allergies. Just like Covid is, just a flu! Figure it out.
Well, they’ve abolished the flu, haven’t they? But everybody is meant to stay masked and to feel guilty for even blowing a nose! What are you supposed to do? Get the death jab? I don’t think so. Plenty of fluids, enough rest, and…sunshine and vitamins. Prayer and “offering up” complete the Rx.
In the meantime, let us enjoy a lovely Spring, and the best days of the year.
– Bishop Dolan