I must say that my heart fell when I read the news from my parish website, “The Bishops of Ohio have suspended all public masses…no services will be observed during Holy Week or Easter.” Knowing that this message was heard by just about every diocese and archdiocese across the United States, and perhaps the whole world, did not bring me comfort.

A cradle Catholic, I can barely recall a time when I have not participated in Lent and the Triduum. Is this what early Christians felt when their rights to attend church services and receive the Eucharist were denied? Did they ask, what am I going to do? How will I live without practicing my faith?

This catastrophe we are facing is not exactly what the early Christians experienced, but I imagine the feelings it evokes are similar.  I have rarely been absent from Sunday services and when I have been unable to attend Mass I feel as if something spiritual and physical is missing.  Attending Mass makes me feel the real presence of God in my life.  It reminds me that I am human and God will always love and forgive me.

In Jeremiah (17:7-8) we are told, “blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is in the Lord. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches it roots to the stream.  It fears not the heat when it comes…in the years of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit.”

Jeremiah’s words remind me that during this world-wide pandemic, I must remember to trust in the Lord, place my hope in the Lord to deliver us safely from this devastating illness. I must pray and continue on my journey through Lent and the Triduum, knowing that I am not alone. I will be traveling with the hearts of my fellow Christians, not despairing but looking forward to God’s help.

-Patricia Herrick, OPA

For online resources prepared by the Dominican Sisters of Peace to commemorate the Lenten season, click here

Is anyone surprised I chose the 10^th anniversary of the Dominican Sisters of Peace and Associates to blog about? Really?

How did we get here? Hard work, trust in God, desire for a future; all of those and so much more . Some Sisters have said they don’t want to spend time looking back on these 10 years. They were hard or painful and they would rather think of the future. Others look back in order to see where we have been and did we miss any signs to show us where we could be? There’s nothing bad about either of those perspectives. I tend to put them together as a both/and.

I do believe we have to know where we’ve been to see where we are and where we could go. Do we scrap it all and start from scratch? Do we just keep everything and create more? Do we take the best from everything and add to it?

We are at a moment in our history. No one dreamed those first Sisters were laying the foundation for a very different congregation to form 100 years or so after the first one, but they did. What has been and will be built on this new foundation is very much a work in progress fraught with fear and hope and nostalgia and promise. Some of us will not see the results or maybe even be able to comprehend what we are seeing. It will happen be assured of that.

Sisters and Associates are celebrating this weekend and even in the midst of it we will be asking what’s next? Together, we will figure it out and move with the Grace and Wisdom that comes from the Spirit.

Today’s first reading is from a text referred to by scholars as “Third” Isaiah.  He is the third writer on this long scroll known generically  as “Isaiah.”  This section extends from chapter  56 to the end of the  scroll (or book)–that is,  to what we know as chapter 66.    Why is that important?  The text draws from the situation at the time it was  written, and our task is to understand how it connects to our own historical and personal experience.  Language  is not spoken or written in an historical vacuum.  By the time this text was composed, the Jewish people had returned from exile in Babylon, the  Temple had been rebuilt and the idea of God’s dwelling  with them was more intense…God  is understood as present to them and through this text –present to us. And that presence calls for response. What is God asking of us?

The issue in both texts this morning is “fasting.” There are times to fast—and times to celebrate, to enjoy the goods of the earth.  But today’s reading suggests that we sometimes don’t understand what fasting is all about—giving up candy (or desserts ) for Lent  may be difficult, but it is not exactly heroic.   The prophet this morning asks us to “set free the oppressed.”   But what if we are the oppressors?    Who are those  we oppress?  –Whom I oppress?   . . . (WE—  –I’m not talking about  radical Islamists or  racists . . .we can oppress without their help. ) It is just a matter of denigrating people we live with or work with, or privately regarding another person  with contempt.  That is the kind of   self- indulgence we are asked to  resist.   We are asked to “set free the oppressed.”   That kind of effort is preferred to fasting.      How do we free those  around us whom we refuse to love? How do we free ourselves from our own self-hatred?  Giving up ice cream isn’t going to fix that kind of bad habit.

In this Gospel reading, Jesus redefines fasting.  Giving up candy is easy compared to giving up our opinions, or our hostility to another , or giving up our leisure to study  something—anything (but preferably scripture).   Lent is not about self-control (which is hard enough) but self-giving—and self emptying.  If that kind of effort is hard—and it is—we can count on the Lord’s help:  “If you cry for help, today’s reading reminds us,  “You shall call—and the Lord will answer. . .He will say to us in what may be our desperation, “Here I am!”

He is here, and in our self doubt and perhaps lack of confidence in our own capacity to love, we can call to Him. “‘Here I am’”  Is the response.    His presence among us is  the basis of our  hope and our reason to  love and forgive one another  and to celebrate—  with or without ice cream—even in Lent.