Bishop Cote's Easter 2007 Pastoral Message
My dear sisters and brothers in Christ:
These forty (40) days of Lent prepare us for the celebration of the Paschal Mystery, the Lord's Passion, Death, and Resurrection. In this holy season, we renew our understanding of what God has done for us so that we may open our hearts anew to Jesus Christ and to His Risen Presence. By living Lent well, we greet and welcome Christ into our lives as the Lamb of God (cf. John 1:29) Whose sacrifice on the Cross atones for our sins and restores us to God's grace.
Whether through prayer, fasting, or almsgiving, Lent equips us with the means to understand more deeply the richness of God's love for us. "For God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world, but so that through Him the world might be saved." (John 3:17) Lent's penitential practices lead us to "ongoing conversion and deeper faith in the Lord who redeemed us." (U.S. Catholic Catechism for Adults, P. 518) In His farewell discourses to the Apostles, Jesus seeks to strengthen our faith and to convince them (and us) of God's love for us. In His prayer to the Father, Jesus prays, "I have made Your Name known to them and I will continue to make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and so that I may be in them." (John 17:26)
By making time each day for prayer, the Rosary, the Way of the Cross, and the reading of Sacred Scripture, especially the Gospel of Saint John where Christ is presented as "the healer and life giver," (The Order of Prayer, Paulist Press Ordo, P. 56) Lent directs our attention to the richness of God's merciful love. His love empowers us to conquer sin and death.
Saint John's Gospel focuses our attention on the person of Jesus Christ and our need for Him as well as His gift of salvation. In redirecting our lives toward Jesus we experience a hunger for God that can only be satisfied through the reception of Penance and the Eucharist. By these Sacraments the burden of sin is lifted from our hearts, we are restored to the life we received in Baptism, and our life of faith is nourished and strengthened.
Lent shows us that without God life is empty. Without God the deepest hunger of our souls cannot be satisfied and life does not make sense. A well-lived Lent rescues us from floundering aimlessly along life's pathways. Our focus on Jesus and His life-giving Passion, Death, and Resurrection helps us to see that Jesus is the perfect lamb of sacrifice whose "precious Blood" is shed for our ransom "from the useless way of life ...". (cf Peter 1:18-19)
In his Lenten Pastoral for 2007, our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, focuses the world's gaze on Christ crucified with the Biblical theme, "They shall look on Him whom they have pierced." (John 19:37) The Holy Father urges us to remain close to Jesus by standing with our Blessed Mother and Saint John near the Cross of Christ. In that terrible moment of torment and death in which Jesus is pierced and nailed to a Cross, the love of God is fully revealed.
The Pope teaches that God's love is both, "the self-giving love of one who looks exclusively for the good of another ... (and) the love of one who desires to possess what he or she lacks, and yearns for union with the beloved." The Holy Father continues, "The Almighty awaits the 'yes' of His creatures as a young bridegroom that of his bride." How could anyone understand this truth and remain separated from God? But as we know, our "yes" to God falters when we rely on ourselves and reject His love by choosing our way over His will. Lent is God's invitation to us to say "yes" to His will, His way, His love.
Pope Benedict enriches our Lenten reflection on Christ crucified as the paramount sign of God's love for us when he writes, "On the Cross, it is God Himself Who begs the love of His creature: He is thirsty for the love of every one of us.... The response the Lord ardently desires of us is, above all, that we welcome His love and allow ourselves to be drawn to Him." The Holy Father reminds us that our Lenten journey leads us to the renewal of our Baptism in which we received God's life. This Lenten journey shows us why we must seek the strength and nourishment of the Eucharist, Jesus' own Body and Blood. In union with Jesus through the Eucharist, we embrace God's love and we receive the courage "to open our hearts to others" and to "re-give" that love to our family members, friends, and neighbors, in short, to everyone.
Look at Jesus Whose Body they have pierced and remember that in the blood and water flowing from His side our salvation has been won. In the agony of Jesus' suffering and death, the Father's love for us is so convincingly and graphically real. The life of grace and the Eucharist symbolized by the water and blood continue to nourish our life of faith received at Baptism through the power of the Holy Spirit.
This Lent, I appeal to every member of this Diocesan Church, as often as you can, at least daily, to make some small sacrifice and to offer a prayer for peace, for an end to war, and for unity and harmony among all people. Our prayers and sacrifices should also be made for our heroic military, especially those who serve in harm's way in Iraq and Afghanistan. Throughout the Lenten and Easter Seasons, I call upon our clergy to include one petition for peace in the General Intercessions of each Sunday Mass. In our penitential practices, by uniting our sacrifices with Jesus' sacrifice on the Cross, we can open our hearts to others, "especially to those who suffer most and are in need." (Pope Benedict's Lenten Pastoral)
By making such a commitment to peace and by "re-giving" God's love to others, we will come to Easter renewed by the essence of God's life, His love for us all. Lent, well lived, will revitalize our lives and faith, renew our hearts in love, and bring us to the joy of Jesus' Resurrection, His victory over sin and death. The joy we experience will come from a closer union with God and a deeper awareness of His merciful love. Then, Jesus' victory over sin and death will truly be ours.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Bishop of Norwich