Lenten Message 2011

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Where this message "comes from"

Lent is always about "getting back to basics." It is the "acceptable time" our heavenly Father offers to his people year after year so that we – he and us together – can put our lives in order – specifically, the order of saving grace constituted by the Paschal Mystery of the Lord Jesus, his Son.

Because this season is so important for the life of each and all, in my love and care for you I am moved to share some of the light the Holy Spirit has given as I prayed about the significance of the Lent we are beginning. First, I want to say something about Lent no matter in what year we celebrate it, and then speak about Lent in this year of grace 2011.

Some things that never change about Lent

First and foremost, this grace of lives reordered is offered to our catechumens, those who are preparing to have their lives radically transformed when Christ baptizes them, confirms them and shares his Eucharistic sacrifice with them at the Easter Vigil. On that "truly blessed night" the Holy Spirit will make them a new creation through these sacraments of initiation. The forty days of Lent are the final and most intense time for you catechumens to prepare your hearts and minds for these actions of our Savior. This is your "agenda" for Lent 2011, and the "action steps" are clearly marked out in the Rite of Christian Initiation.

All of us who have already undergone this rebirth find great joy in seeing you catechumens become one with us in the New Covenant in Christ's blood, especially those who are your spouses and children, your neighbors and friends. We are, however, more than observers of the Paschal Mystery working its transformation in you. While this Lent, 2011 is especially your Lent, it's ours, too. We share it with you. We have our own particular "agenda items."

Two particular ways we take part in the Lent of the catechumens are: first, by accompanying them with our prayers and encouragement; and second, by walking the Lenten journey with them. Let me offer a few comments about what follows from these two "agenda items" that belong to those of us who are already initiated into Christ's Pasch.

We who already are part of the communion of the Church accompany you, the catechumens, with our prayers for you, with our example and encouragement, with our welcome and acknowledgment – with all the authentic human ways (ways suffused with Christ's own love) that we accept you into the family the Father has established by adopting us in his Son.

Secondly, we the baptized share in the Lent of the catechumens by "making Lent" for ourselves. These forty days are for us also an intense period to prepare for the Easter Feast – for our participation in the Paschal Sacraments. Yes, it won't be our first sharing in these mysteries, but we want to share in them "as if" it were the first time.

Let me reflect on this "as if" for bit.

Christ compares the New Covenant with a marriage, for the Church's covenant and the marriage convent both establish a bond of intimate communion that endures in good times and in bad. If for you catechumens, then, the Sacraments of Initiation at the Easter Vigil are your marriage with Christ, then for us baptized, the Paschal Sacraments are the renewal of our entering the covenant with Christ, the marriage of our hearts with his. We, like you and inspirited by you, prepare ourselves throughout Lent; so that when we "renew our vows" in celebrating the Easter Feast we will have removed – we will have let God remove – from our hearts everything that would pull us way from being faithful to Christ.

So, Lent is for all of us, catechumens and baptized, a period of intense conversion – forty days consecrated to "repenting and believing in the Gospel."

The time-honored and proven strategies for this pre-paschal conversion are set out by Jesus himself in the Gospel for Ash Wednesday: deeper prayer, generous self-denial and increased charitable good works. All of us should do something from each category every day. That is the meaning of our receiving ashes on the first day of Lent: we are dedicating ourselves to this project of conversion.

In an effort to keep this letter relatively brief, I won't describe particular forms of prayer, self denial and good works that I would recommend. Many good books, pamphlets and web sites offer helpful advice about this. What I do want to recommend is that these three forms of Lenten acts take center stage in every family's life. Husbands and wives can discuss their plans for Lent, they can share in the Lenten practices of each other and they can encourage each other and hold one another accountable. The same holds true for children and their parents. One of the essential things Christian parents need to teach their children is how to keep Lent.

To end this section, let's go back to basics once more: the whole point of Lent is to come to Easter with minds and hearts made new.

Lent 2011 – A time for "mercy"

As I've indicated earlier, I view Lent this year as a season for God to offer us a very particular grace, a grace that culminates in the Beatification of Pope John Paul II on May 1. Therefore, the offer of this special grace should give a particular shape to every day of the Lent that leads up to the Easter that includes the beatification.

Let me explain:

As I said, the very essence of Lent is preparation. And the meaning of a preparation is defined by that for which it prepares. Every year, Lent prepares us for the celebration of Christ's Pasch, in which we share sacramentally, and because of this our preparation has the distinctive nature of being a conversion. Every year conversion flowers into new life. Every year Lent flowers forth in Easter. However, Easter is not just one day, not just the 24th day of April this year. Easter is such a great feast that it takes a whole week to celebrate. Yes, the stores will have their decorations down when they open on the 25th, but for the Church the Easter Feast takes eight days. Easter "day" takes eight days! Our joy is too great to be captured in any shorter time. We call this the Easter Octave.

This year Pope John Paul's beatification will fall on that Sunday that ends Easter Week: May 1. The beatification is the event that caps our Easter, and so this event adds a particular color both to our Easter celebration and to the Lent we make to prepare for it.

In what follows I would like to identify the particular grace of Pope John Paul's beatification, the grace of the day that this year ends the eight days of "Easter Day." I want to do this so that in our keeping of Lent and Easter this year, we may take hold of the particular gift that the Holy Spirit is offering us.

It is my view that the special grace of the up-coming beatification is mercy.

The Venerable John Paul II will be beatified on "Mercy Sunday" – the epithet he himself gave to the Sunday that ends the Easter Octave. This is only one part of the evidence that Pope Benedict did not select this date at random. Pope John Paul II died on the Vigil of Mercy Sunday. Pope John Paul II was a great advocate of the Divine Mercy Devotion fostered by St. Faustina. He wrote his second Encyclical on God's mercy: Dives in misericordia ("Rich in mercy"). All this makes clear to me that Pope Benedict is underscoring the fact that one of the best ways to understand John Paul II is as a witness to God's mercy. This leads me to conclude that a particular grace which God offers us this Lent and Easter is to answer our call to be, like Blessed John Paul II, witnesses to God's mercy

Joining Blessed John Paul II as witnesses to God's mercy

In what follows I want briefly to sketch out my counsel about how to take hold of this grace of our vocation to give testimony to God's mercy. I say "sketch," since I don't want to lengthen this message unduly, but I do want to lay out a few fundamental points that can be used for orienting our Lenten observance and Easter celebration, along with suggestions about how you might fill in the details.

The two basic strategies for being renewed as witnesses to God's mercy are the same as in every other part of Christian living: first, listen; then, respond.

Listening. The listening we need to do this Lent and Easter so we can imitate Pope John Paul II in testifying to God's mercy is prayerfully to contemplate the Lord's mercy. The late pope's encyclical, mentioned above, on "the mercy of God" Dives in misericordia (DM) would make excellent Lenten reading.

(You can find it on the web at http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0215/__P2.HTM.)

For the purposes of this message let me cite one passage that can serve as summary description of the nature of God's mercy:

Believing in the crucified Son means "seeing the Father," (cf. Jn 14:9) means believing that love is present in the world and that this love is more powerful than any kind of evil in which individuals, humanity, or the world are involved. Believing in this love means believing in mercy. For mercy is an indispensable dimension of love; it is as it were love's second name and, at the same time, the specific manner in which love is revealed and effected vis-à-vis the reality of the evil that is in the world, affecting and besieging man, insinuating itself even into his heart and capable of causing him to "perish in Gehenna." (Mt 10:28) [DM, 8]

"Mercy" is the other name for God's love; it is how God's love for us shows up in the world, scarred as it is by sin and suffering.

Every day of Lent and Easter is a day to contemplate God's mercy, because the "Pascal Mystery is the culmination of [the] revealing and effecting of mercy" (DM, n. 8.) There is no scripture reading, no prayer in the liturgies of Lent or Easter that does not speak of divine mercy. Every chapter of Sacred Scripture is an account of the working out of this mercy. It is into the mystery of this mercy that we are initiated by the sacraments.

The beatification of Pope John Paul II at the end of Easter Week this year is, I believe, a call from the Holy Spirit to contemplate prayerfully God's mercy every day of Lent and Easter.

Responding. Responding with praise and gratitude to what we "see" of God's mercy will form an integral and indispensable part of all prayer focused on God's mercy. Once we recognize how much God has loved us, how can we not say again and again: "We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world"? Is there any better prayer for each day of Lent than to ask for the mercy that is offered us in abundance: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner"? And in our celebration of Easter, do we not repeat again and again: "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endures forever"?

The acts of self-denial and good works that always form part of our Lent should also take on a particular configuration in 2011, since this year they are ways for you, catechumens, to prepare for your consecration as witnesses to God's mercy, and for us, already baptized, to be prepared for our renewal in that calling. We deny the fulfillment of our own appetites in order both to imitate the selflessness of the merciful Jesus and to have more to give to others in imitation of his merciful self-giving. We perform good works in imitation of Christ, whose merciful love led him to love us "unto the end."

The world needs God's mercy

In Pope John Paul II's encyclical on God's mercy, one of the points which sticks in my mind is his remark that "humanity and the modern world need [God's mercy] so much" (DM, 2)

I see the truth of this every day. In our own persons and in our communities – in our hearts and minds, in our families and neighborhoods, in our region and our world – we are hurting. We need mercy, God's mercy – the unconditional love of Jesus Christ which is unlimited in its power to heal our misery.

The mission we receive at Baptism is to be ambassadors of God's mercy. We have been bathed in mercy; we have been anointed with mercy; we are fed with mercy. But we must be not only recipients; we must also share what we have received. We, like the soon-to-be beatified John Paul II, must be witnesses to God's mercy. His beatification on Mercy Sunday tells us that the real source of his impact on our age has been his faithful and untiring testimony to God's mercy. His beatification on Mercy Sunday is his invitation to us to carry on this work. The world needs that. The Church needs that. Each of us needs that from all of us.

I pray that all of you, in your homes and parishes, have a truly blessed Lent, one that prepares you well not only to celebrate the feast of Christ's Pasch liturgically this year, but ultimately to keep it forever with him in heaven.

May the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Mercy and Mother of the Church, guard and guide us all into the fullness of God's grace.

Yours in Christ,Abp. Allen Vigneron