Alleluia! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia! A very blessed and joyous Easter Season be yours.

The liturgies of Holy Week and the Triduum have come and gone but their glory and glow still linger. Even before I arrived in Crookston, I had heard how great the celebration of the Chrism Mass truly is in this local church. Well, the reality certainly lived up to the billing. What a beautiful Chrism Mass we celebrated Monday of Holy Week. Thank you to all who travelled to join in the special prayer. The presence of people from all of our parishes truly helped make the Chrism Mass a celebration of the whole church here. Thanks to all who helped make this Mass so special.

I celebrated the liturgies of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday at the Cathedral and they, too, were so special and wonderful. Certainly a high point was the Easter Vigil Mass and the baptism of Ashlee Donarski and the reception into full communion with the Catholic Church of Jennifer Wills, Richard Stangle, Alyssa Lien and Brady Borslien. We are blessed that a good number of people, young and old, joined us this special night of the Easter Vigil. And throughout the world, how many thousands and hundreds of thousands of people were joined to us in the Catholic Church. Statistics, available for 2006, show that the Catholic population of the world increased in 2006 by 1.4%, from 1.115 billion to 1.131 billion. We never forget that Jesus the Christ wishes all people of the world to come to the fullness of truth and the fullness of life in Himself. The fullness of what Jesus brings to us is found, we know and believe, in the Catholic Church.

The teaching of Vatican Council II is clear that the Church, which Jesus founded and handed over to Peter to be shepherded, and which is constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church. This is to say that the Church of Christ survives in the world today in its institutional fullness in the Catholic Church. We thank God for our life in this one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.

Mercy and Love

During these days of the Octave of Easter we have been using the First Eucharistic Prayer with it’s inclusions: “In union with the whole Church we celebrate that day when Jesus Christ our Lord, rose from the dead in his human body”; “Father accept this offering from your whole family and from those born into the new life of water and the Holy Spirit with their sins forgiven.” As this Eucharistic Prayer comes to the end, we pray and remind Almighty God that “Though we are sinners, we trust in your mercy and love.”

One of the very first encyclicals Pope John Paul II wrote was entitled Dives in Misericordia (Rich in Mercy). In this encyclical letter to the faithful of the world, Pope John Paul II celebrated the fact that it is God who is rich in mercy which Jesus Christ has revealed to us as Father. In Christ, the Holy Father noted, God becomes “especially visible in His mercy.”

The encyclical highlighted the connection between mercy and love. Jesus’ love found particular expression in contact with suffering, injustice, poverty and especially sin. Jesus’ movement to alleviate these in our human condition, “in biblical language is called ‘mercy.’” God always loves us, and that love is expressed in God’s mercy to us.

In his encyclical, Pope John Paul gave encouragement to people of our time, a reminder that particularly when they find themselves in the suffering and painful moments of life, they can always count on and call on the mercy of our loving God. The encyclical also reminded us as the Church that we are to be an instrument of our loving God in bringing mercy to our brothers and sisters.

I was not surprised when, on April 30, 2000, Pope John Paul II canonized the Polish woman, Sister Faustina Kowaska, who for years had fostered devotion to Divine Mercy. Shortly after, on May 23, 2000, the Congregation for Divine Worship decreed that “throughout the world, the Second Sunday of Easter will receive the name Divine Mercy Sunday, a perennial invitation to the Christian world to face, with confidence in divine benevolence, the difficulties and trials that humankind will experience in the years to come.”

As I sit and write this, we are preparing to conclude the Octave of Easter this coming Sunday, the Second Sunday of Easter, in which we also delight in celebrating Divine Mercy Sunday. We celebrate God’s continuing love and mercy and commit ourselves to call upon and rely upon that love and mercy in all our difficult moments.

May we also commit ourselves to be disciples who bring the face of the love and mercy of our Risen Lord to all in need.