March 22, 2008


Dear Parents and Girls:

As I sat in Church on Good Friday and reflected on the memories from childhood of how my Mother had us spend the day, I realized again that our beliefs are the same, our prayers are the same, our sense of Jesus’ love for us is the same, but the way we experience the reality in our lives today is different. I remember singing the verses after each Station of the Cross about the Mother of God. I remember the genuflecting and the walking around the Church of the priest and the altar boys and as strange as it seemed the words used were the same ones that were in the book for the stations when I was growing up.

On Good Friday morning we would be placed in silence and asked to be silent until 1:00 when we went to Church for the meditation on the Seven Last Words of Jesus, the Stations of the Cross and the Veneration of the Cross in front of statues draped in purple and an empty altar. Of course we whispered to each other and still had our sibling arguments, but we tried to hold in our hearts the sacredness of that day. The tradition of the visit to Church and the services remained in the family, but not the silence as my siblings raised their children.

In the last few years since the release of Mel Gibson’s, “The Passion of the Christ” Good Friday has once again gained the respect of the present generations. The reality of the suffering of Jesus and what it means for us is brought home in that presentation like nothing since the book, “A Doctor at Calvary,” written many years ago. We sense the humanity of Jesus, the significance of his will to suffer for us, his courage in the face of the impending betrayal, his acceptance of God’s will as he sweat blood and told his Father, “not my will but your will be done.” Good Friday is all about Jesus which means it is all about love.

Yet we have to realize that Good Friday is all about each of us as is Holy Thursday. Just pause a moment and ask God to send the Holy Spirit as you reflect on your life in the face of Jesus’ life on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Who has not been at a celebration with friends when it is clear that there is something amiss as there was with Judas? Who has not wondered like the apostles, what is going on? Who has not seen someone you love facing a reality one would rather not face as Jesus did at the last supper when Judas left the group?

What about the rest of the events? It is about us, about how Jesus took upon himself and transformed for us the sorrow and the suffering of all of humanity. We will know betrayal, abandonment, false judgment, mocking, humiliation, misunderstanding. We will be left out by those we have associated with. We will face the same things in our lives, however, we know that we can overcome all of it because Jesus has made it possible. Just believe in Jesus’ love.

We celebrate the gift of Jesus’ body and blood in the Eucharist. The apostles understood the words of Jesus, “Take and eat, this is my body” and “Take and drink, this is my blood,” after the Resurrection. We understand now, as best we can, as we celebrate the feast of the empty tomb. That empty tomb is our assurance of a wonderful life here filled with love and with suffering transformed, and of a wonderful life with God at the end of our journey on earth. May the empty spaces within us be filled with the love we witness during this Holy Week. New life and energy is ours because of our faith. Happy Easter.

Love,  Sister Camille Anne