“We can find a place to dialogue in silence with the Lord. This solitude increases our sensitivity to those who cry out for help.” – Bishop Wayne Kirkpatrick
Pastoral Letter
Season of Lent 2024
My Dear People,
Pope Francis says, “In the desert one hears the Word of God, one finds intimacy with God and the love of the Lord,” It is not easy for us to be in the desert when we are surrounded by water. Without any difficulty we can transfer the brown sand of the desert to the white snow of winter. We can walk amid the snow and find the solitude of the desert. We can find a place to dialogue in silence with the Lord. This solitude increases our sensitivity to those who cry out for help. This is why we invite you to become involved with Development and Peace to help such people in the Global South, Reaping Our Rights.
The feast of the Presentation of the Lord on February 2 marked forty days since celebrating the birth of Jesus at Christmas. This day also marks the halfway point of winter. It may not seem likely, but spring is on the way with each passing day, as we notice the lengthening of the daylight. The word Lent comes from the Old English word, lencten, which refers to the lengthening daylight hours and to springtime which is a time of renewal and new life.
This year, the secular celebration of Valentine’s Day falls on Ash Wednesday which marks the beginning of Lent. Although one is temporal, and the other is spiritual; they are complementary since they both focus on love. One focuses on the sentiments of love but the other focuses on the essence of love. This forty-day Season of Lent is a time for fasting, almsgiving and prayer. Fasting is an act of self-denial and a way of directing our thoughts away from ourselves and towards our God. Almsgiving is the act by which we give of ourselves in order to assist someone in need. Prayer should be the centre of our Christian lives lifting up our hearts in praise and thanksgiving to our God who loves us. The exercise of these virtues keeps us close to God and keeps us focused on service to others. We deny ourselves because we love.
May this Season of Lent lead us to renewal in our faith.
Sincerely in Christ,
+ Wayne Joseph Kirkpatrick
Bishop Wayne Joseph Kirkpatrick
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Our journey of faith throughout the Season of Lent provides us with an opportunity to reflect on synodality within our local and universal Church. Synodality means Journeying Together. As members of the Church, we are called to proclaim the Gospel by word and example, by our faith witness. As a diocese we have been invited to continue the Synod conversations during Lent, sharing the fruits of the Synthesis document approved by the Synod of Bishops in October 2023 and adding our voices to Synod study groups being convened by Pope Francis at the Vatican in preparation of the second session of the Synod in October 2024.
You are invited to be part of the Synod journey during Lent by hosting a conversation or any opportunity for discussion in your parish. Attached is a resource document to support the hosting of conversations, including questions for discussion, promotional materials, facilitator’s guide, and more. Themes of ‘Poverty’, ‘Family’ and ‘Community’ are offered as discussion topics: you are welcome to discuss one, two or all three, or a different topic if you wish. The importance is that we as people of God gather, listen, and share. In doing so, we will discover that we are truly ‘Journeying together’ in faith.
From Bishop’s Pastoral Note:
Share Lent Campaign Development and Peace – Caritas Canada (DPCC) 2024
On March 17, we celebrated Solidarity Sunday. I invite you to help Create Hope by giving generously support the 2024 Share Lent collection in our diocese. You are invited to donate through your Share Lent envelope or online.
If you have not yet ordered the free Share Lent materials for your parish, you can do so at Resources Lent 2024 | Development and Peace – Caritas Canada (devp.org)
See Create Hope: Reaping Our Rights
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Download the PDF:
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Lent 2024 Reflections
From Sheila O’Handley, Diocesan Hermit
Week Six
Festive Blessings
I hope that the Lenten Reflections – attending to the treasures of the heart – were a blessing in anticipation of the Easter Event.
Welcome to this most solemn week of Passion – Passion in the sense of a consuming purpose, of Tragedy, and of Resurrection.
a) Consuming Passion:
Jesus’ Passion was the mission-vision of his Abba-God consciousness. He announced it as the inauguration of the reign, the governance of God’s Love- Justice, meaning the fidelity to the Covenant of Love. It was that consuming vision that passioned Jesus in life, in mission, and in death. Actually, it was Jesus’ Passion that got him killed.
And we may have gotten lost in the passion of Atonement theology, and missed Jesus’ Passion. Atonement theology is an interpretation of Jesus’ death, emphasizing the substitutionary nature of his death. This interpretation was put forward by the eleventh-century theologian, Anselm, that Jesus died for our sins and the sins of the world. What is even more incredible is the accompanying position that the God of Jesus demanded his death.
b) Tragedy of Injustice:
The Cross was a Roman instrument of gruesome execution of imperial terrorism – a slow agonizing death. This form of death was reserved for very special victims – rebel insurgents, or anyone who challenged, or seemed to challenge Roman law. Roman governance operated, and forcibly so, within a structure of dominance, inclusive of the political, the economical, and the religious lives of the Jewish people.
Jesus, in his commitment to the reign of God’s Love-Justice, was, in the eyes of Roman Imperialism, perceived as a threat to Roman leadership and Roman authority, and so was condemned to death as a rebel insurgent.
Another feature of Roman execution, a teaching moment of sort, it was always a public event. An event that terrorized the people into submission; disobedience to Roman governance warranted death by crucifixion.
C) Resurrection – Poetic Justice:
God’s Love-Justice vindicated Jesus in the Resurrection, poetic justice indeed.
The Universal portrait of the Resurrection – Jesus ascending from the tomb of death, taking with him human kind, and leading them out of the bondage of death, is a very powerful image of Hope.
The leading out also indicates that something happened to the human family – a transformation into the cosmic Love-Justice of God. This Resurrected Love-Justice is once again a manifestation of God’s faithfulness to Covenant Love.
The cosmic Love-Justice comes with cosmic responsibility. This new life-source empowers each of us to confront injustices: both personal and collective, and both civic and religious in our world today, that obstructs the Love-Justice of God.
We are the living Cross and Resurrection in the world today.
Try this:
– Stand erect.
– Now, stretch out your arms as far as you can.
– Observe yourself – You are the resurrected cross.
– Be that resurrected cross, the carrier of the Love-Justice into the world today.
Happy Easter – ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA, ALLELUIA.
Week Five
Blessings of Joy
Last week’s reflection offered a brief overview of early Christian portraits of the Resurrection, and of the heart’s imaginal treasure – the imagination – its’ power to interpret faith over and over with renewed and new understanding.
This week my choice of phrase is, “I will put my law within them, and will write it on their hearts”. Jesus was quite clear about what law Yahweh was referencing. As a practicing Jew, Jesus would have been well aware of the moral code expressed in the Ten Commandments – a moral code for life, and a way to live together rooted and grounded in Covenant Love – which was given to Moses on Mount Sinai.
What does Jesus do. He consolidates the moral law of his faith tradition into one law only – the Law of LOVE. The Law of Love, Jesus put this way – “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second resembles it: You must love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:37-40) How about that for a mirror reflection of Love… ingenious.
It appears that we have difficulty in getting our minds around this moral code of Love. It seems that we need more and more rules, and more and more regulations, and more and more doing, instead of more and more being in love, and doing the loving thing.
The reality is that our head/mind can never come to full understanding of Love. The Law of Love is not in the mind/head, it is in the heart. I am more inclined to put it this way, THE HEART’S ABODE IS LOVE, and the heart knows so. Covenant Love births us in love, and births the heart into Love.
Anyone who has been in love knows that love is the abode of the heart.
In closing I leave you with the following love poetry for your contemplation.
Water from Your Spring
What was in that candle’s light
that opened me so quickly?
Come back, my friend! The form of our love is not a created form.
Nothing can help me but that beauty.
That as a dawn I remember
When my soul heard something
From your soul. I drank water
From your spring and felt
the current take me.
Persian Poet Rumi
Sonnet 43
How do I love thee?
Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight.
For the ends of being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of ever day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
The Hebrew Love Poetry of the Song of Songs, comprised of five love poems.
Excerpts from various Poems
Poem One: “…Tell me then, you whom my heart loves: Where will you lead your flock to graze, where will you rest it at noon?
That I may no more wander like a vagabond beside the flocks of your companions…”
Poem Two: “… Come then, my love, my lovely one come. For winter is past…”
Poem Three: “… You ravish my heart, my sister, my promised bride, you ravish my heart with a single one of your glances…”
Poem Four: “… I charge you, daughters of Jerusalem, if you should find my Beloved, what must you tell him…? That I am sick with love…”
During this fifth week of Lent spend some time with the Song of Songs.
Give some reflection to: “The abode of the heart is love.”
Week Four
Greetings of Gratitude!
Last week, inspired by Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple, we paused for a time noticing the heart’s moral treasure – our conscience – empowering us to make moral choices for peace, and for justice, instead of choices for war, for violence, and to possess power over others.
This week we will give some consideration to early Christian images of the Resurrection.
The Resurrection was the signature event that gathered, and that forged the early but small number of Jewish followers of Jesus into a community of believers. Their shared storytelling of the Resurrection motivated them to capture in art: paintings, sculptures, and frescoes of the Resurrection.
The Resurrection – the transformation of death into new life of cosmic LOVE emanating from the God of Covenant Love – gives direction to all of Life, and to the Christian community today.
The biblical scholar John Dominic Crossan and his wife Sarah Sexton Crossan in their interesting book, Resurrecting Easter, shared a travel log account of their fifteen years of research into the earliest Christian portraits of the Resurrection. Their research uncovered an evolutionary development of interesting and various depictions of the Resurrection.
Appearing first were what they identified as ‘indirect images’ of the Resurrection. These were simply a variety of images of the empty tomb: guards guarding the empty tomb, women and men disciples visiting the tomb and finding the tomb empty, and various encounters with the risen Jesus.
Later, what surfaced as they continued their research were two but very different ‘direct images’ of the Resurrection. The first direct image of the resurrection appeared by the year 400. This resurrection scene pictured only Jesus risen. Also, what is noteworthy and interesting about the images of ‘Jesus only’, is that Jesus’ physical body does not appear in full view until later.
The second direct image showed up around the year 700. This Resurrection scene was significantly different. Jesus does not rise alone. Instead of rising
alone, all of humanity rises with him in the gesture of reaching out and taking Adam by the hand, Eve holding Adam’s hand. Adam and Eve, thus liberated from death also, symbolizes the liberating from death all of humankind. This Resurrection scene became known as the Universal Resurrection. There were also a variety of other Universal Resurrection portraits which included such individuals as Paul, John the Baptist and the Prophets accompanying Adam and Eve.
So, in the early years of the birthing of Christianity, we find expressed in art a variety of ‘indirect ‘representations of the Resurrection, and two images of ‘direct’ Resurrection – Individual and Universal.
As time progressed, Christianity made two distinct choices as to which imagery of the Resurrection captured the EASTER event; Western Christianity chose the Individual Resurrection scene, the ‘Jesus only’ version, while Eastern Christianity chose the Universal image of the Resurrection, expressing the inclusivity of what happened within the EASTER event, the liberation of humankind from the imprisonment of death’s effects.
In summary, the book Resurrecting Easter, confirmed for me that the power of the human imagination that resides within the human heart is the power to interpret faith over and over with renewed and new understanding.
I even imagined the addition of the Universal Resurrection as the fifteenth Station of the Cross, and the Universal Resurrection portrait of the Easter Event in our places of worship.
The Universal Resurrection portrait of the Easter Event as holistic and inclusive is filled with HOPE for a world besieged consciously and unconsciously by the many expressions of darkness and evil presently being experienced by the human family.
Suggestive practice for the Fourth Week of Lent.
– Give yourself a moving experience of creative art – search Resurrection scenes and spend some time with the images expressed in such beauty.
– Give thanks for the heart’s creative treasure – Imagination.
– As we begin our preparations for the second session of the Synod on Synodality, let us make a commitment to bring forward the Easter hope of Universal Resurrection to the Mission of the Church in the world of the 21st century.
– Am I a portrait of the Resurrection in my choices?
Week Three
Blessings of Justice
Last week we spent some time with the question – Is there life after death?
The deplorable and untimely death-murder of Russian Alexei Navalny decided my choice for this week’s reflection: the portrait of Jesus in the Temple. Similarities did echo for me between Jesus the man, and the man Navalny – self -sacrificial Love.
The often-quoted phrase – a picture is worth a thousand words – can certainly be applied to the image of Jesus in the Temple.
Given the traditional devotional images of the kind, the gentle, the peaceful, and seemingly passive Jesus, the Temple picture of Jesus is somewhat jarring for some individuals, while for others it is a powerful image.
As a practicing Jew, Jesus certainly would have been in Jerusalem, and visited the Temple at least three times a year, participating in the three major Jewish pilgrimages.
The Passover a spring time pilgrimage, in which the Jewish people retell in celebration their Exodus story from Egypt within a meal – the Seder; Sukkot or Booths a harvest festivity, celebrating the gathering of the harvest, and also in thanksgiving for the care and protection Yahweh bestowed on the people as they left captivity in Egypt; and Shavuot – the Jewish Pentecost, a celebration commemorating the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai.
We really don’t know why Jesus visited the temple that day. We can only assume that it was during his ministry years, and probably was during the latter part of his rather short ministry.
However, what was for certain, Jesus threatened the ruling Roman authorities of his day, Pilate and company, as did Alexei Navalny, the Russian authority of his day, Putin. This action in the Temple was the event that sealed Jesus’ fate. Putin’s fear of a jailed man, during a forthcoming Russian election sealed Navalny’s fate.
Fear can hold uncanny power over us, in the same way that ego’s needs for commanding control does, thus preventing us from doing what is right and just.
The Scriptures tell us both in word and in vivid image, Jesus’s emotional response to what he encountered as he entered the Temple that day. The Temple, sacred to him because it enveloped the significance of both the religious and the historical identity of his Jewish heritage being desecrated by the buying and selling of the money changers, elicited a strong emotional expression of anger.
At a deeper level he was also motivated by Justices – Justice for the poor who were being exploited by the buying and selling of the money changers in the Temple that day.
To act justly is holy. It will at times ask of us the ultimate sacrifice – the giving of one’s life for issues of justice as Jesus did and as Alexie Navalny did.
Jesus’ action in the Temple moves us further into our heart in reach of our conscience. Conscience is our moral life, and it is about our choices and their consequences.
Let us then this week of Lenten preparations:
– Name the courageous and fearless people we know.
– What would I be willing to die for?
– Pray, Teilhard de Chardin Prayer.
“Lord, lock me up in the deepest depths of Your heart; and then, holding me there, burn me, purify me, set me on fire, sublimate me, till I become utterly what You would have me be, through the utter annihilation of my ego.”
– Practice the advice of the Prophet Micah – 6:8
“This is what Yahweh asks of you: Only this, to act justly, to love tenderly, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Week Two
Greetings of Peace as we enter the Second Week of Lent.
Last week, entering our hearts, we discovered there the treasure of God’s Covenant Love.
This week our focus is Peter, James and John’s preoccupation with their question, “what this rising from the dead could mean.” (Mark 9:10). Isn’t that preoccupation a shade of our basic question: Is there life after death?
These three men being Jews, as was Jesus, would have had some understanding of their Jewish tradition of belief in the general resurrection of the body. Yet, Jesus’ command “tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man has risen from the dead” evoked questioning. One wonders, did they sense something new about their religious tradition in Jesus?
The question becomes, was their response to Jesus’ command actually about the statement Jesus made, or was it more about the man Jesus who made the statement? I am more inclined to think it was the man.
Their young relationship with, and the following of their Jewish brother did elicit something about his person – a new sense of ‘presence’ emanating from him.
They observed this presence in his approach to life, his approach to death, how he related respectfully and with concern for all, his closeness to nature, his questioning of authority, as well as his Jewish culture and religious traditions.
They sensed intuitively that Jesus did hold some answer to their question about what rising from the dead meant.
The very question of Peter, James and John – WHAT DOES THIS RSING FROM THE DEAD COULD MEAN pervades and vibrates within the lining of our heart. It is not simply a question of immortality – the desire to live forever. The desire to live forever is a deep faith question – Is there life after death? And it quivers in our heart.
During the Second Week of Lent:
– Let us take some quiet time to listen to the vibrating question – Is there life after death? – echoing in the chambers of our heart. Note what surfaces for you and why?
– Read Mary Oliver’s Poem: When Death Comes.
Here are a few lines of her poem:
“… when it is over, I want to say, all of my life, I was a bride married to amazement, I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms…”
“…I don’t want to end up simply having visited the world…”
– Recall what Jesus said, “I am the resurrection. If anyone believes in me, even though they die they will live, and who ever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:26)
– Do you?
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Week One
Blessings and welcome to the First Week of Lent.
The word that surfaced for me in the scripture readings for the first week of Lent was the word COVENANT in Genesis 9:8-15, – a conversation God had with Noah and his sons.
Yahweh’s conversation with Noah reveals a God desirous of, and we might even say a God in need of relationship. God is also very clear about who the initiator of the covenant is – “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants…” The covenant is about what God does and not about what we do.
Karl Rahner, a prominent twentieth century theologian describes the covenant relationship primarily as a relationship of self-communication, a relationship of self-disclosure of who God is – a God of Love, and what God is like – deeply relational. God’s covenant is a covenant of LOVE.
What covenant love does… it creates the other in the image and likeness of the Lover. Isn’t that what being in love does… we create one another, we become one another. Therefore, covenant love creates us in the image and likeness of God, who is love, we too become and are creative lovers.
Psalm 139 confirms covenant love … “ I praise you because I am so fearfully and wonderfully made…” And in terms of science – neuroscience covenant love wires us for LOVE.
And as the conversation continues it becomes quite clear that the covenant is not selectively exclusive, it is inclusive of all, everyone and everything is included, and continues generation from generation. There is a quality of for-ever-ness about the covenant.
“This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”
How strikingly appropriate is God’s declaration that the covenant is… “between me and the earth”… between God and the earth in this time of concern for Mother Earth, and the challenges that climate change awakens within the human family.
For too long we have been obsessed with the understanding that God’s Covenant is simply with the human. This obsession has obscured the reality that God’s Covenant is with the earth also.
In closing I offer the following as possible ways of entering into our Lenten practices.
. Let us give thanks for the TREASURE of God’s Covenant Love actively present within our hearts, forming us into the image and likeness of God’s Self.
. Let us be mindful that the Resurrection is the Universal Presence of God’s Covenant commitment to Life.
. Pray Psalm 139.
. Become familiar with one of Pope Francis’ responses to present-day concern for the environment: Encyclical, Laudate Si’ – On Care for Our Common Home, and or Laudate Deum – Praise God, his most recent apostolic exhortation which further addresses environmental issues.
. Spend some time with the words of Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, “The one who is filled with an impassioned love of Jesus hidden in the forces which bring increase to the earth, that one the earth well lift up, like a mother, in the immensity of her arms, and will enable them to contemplate the face of God.”
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About these Lenten Reflections:
Lent is a time of preparation in anticipation of the Easter Event – the Resurrection of Jesus. What happened to Jesus in the experience of Resurrection has also happened to us, is happening to us, and in the world. The Resurrection is a cosmic event. It is our present and future HOPE.
It is interesting to note, that when we survey the Gospel narratives there is no actual description of the Resurrection. Instead, what is narrated is an empty tomb, visitations to the empty tomb by both women and men disciples, and a variety of encounters with the risen Jesus. An interesting omission indeed of such an important event in the life of Jesus when other significant events, such as Jesus’ Annunciation, Nativity, Baptism, Crucifixion, and Ascension are well choreographed.
As such, Jesus did not speak of Lent. However, he did speak of his forth coming Resurrection.
In both the Gospel of Matthew 6:19-21, and the Gospel of Luke 12:33-34, one could say that Jesus captured the essence of Lent as a time of discernment and identification of the treasures that occupy the heart: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.
Each week I will highlight a word or phrase from the Sunday Scriptures as a way to facilitate our discernment of, and identification of, the treasures homing in our hearts.
May our Lenten Journey bless each of us, and our world with a renewed HOPE AND TRUST in the active presence of the Resurrection.
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A video series with a reflection for Ash Wednesday and each Sunday of Lent:
