Passiontide

This weekend we enter into Passiontide, the final two weeks of Lent where we’re asked to focus our minds and hearts more intently on the unfolding story of Salvation that we will hear and celebrate in the days to come.  In these days we see Christ’s emotions pulled in so many directions – feeling the adulation of the crowds on Palm Sunday but knowing they would turn so quickly against Him, the sorrow of Holy Thursday as He spent His final night with His disciples, His love as He gave the gift of the Eucharist, His humility as He knelt and washed their feet.  The fear that followed as He wept in Gethsemane and then was arrested.  The loneliness of Good Friday as He was judged and tortured and led to death, the anguish of the Cross and then the final moment of fulfilment as He said “it is accomplished” and gave up His spirt.  This week offers to every soul ever born the knowledge that no matter what we face in life, Christ Himself has felt that way, that He came to feel that way and came to bring hope to replace all that is ever wrong in life and the world.  As Christians we’re asked always, but in these weeks especially, to pick up that gift of hope and use it well – to share the joys of the happy, to shoulder the burdens of the tired, to be the company of the lonely, the friend of the forgotten and the glimmer of light that the hopeless need to rise and live and believe once more.  Passiontide is a gift to those who believe to remind them of God’s love, but it is also a lesson too to love as God Himself has done.  Why?  For the glory of Easter morning – eternal life.  In an ever more troubled world, this is your moment to live your faith – to not turn from God but to show your faith in every way.

With every blessing – Fr O’Neill