Well, here we are in the “new normal” of COVID-19. And we don’t know how long it’s going to be before things change.

We have to strive to be strong and to be together (in spirit, of course). This indeed will test our character, our strength, and our coping mechanisms, and will really show what we’re made of. And the better we learn to handle ourselves in this time of isolation, the more bearable these days will be.

If, however, it seems our lives are beginning to unravel and/or spiral out of control, we would do well to remember that there is someone who can still be our Rock. His name is Jesus Christ. The blessing of having our Catholic faith is that we know this. But what about those who don’t? Perhaps this could be a significant moment in history for us to help people come to desire him more than ever before. This, of course, will be influenced by the degree to which we radiate peace and joy amid this time of great suffering and upheaval.

If our lives are seen as attractive (in the ways not of this world), people might be more open to Jesus, as a result of first becoming more open to us. Hopefully, authentic relationships may develop through which a person might choose to eventually take a leap of faith. And we want people to take that leap, for after doing so, what might seem like unbearable suffering can be seen in a new light.

How Faith Transforms What We “See”
In my own life, I was moved by the attractive example of others, opened my heart to Christ more, began to taste his love in a new way, and began to trust him more than I ever had before. This made it easier for me to cooperate with God’s grace, which brought about blessings beyond measure (and much healing). This brought me to realize that God’s plan for me was better than my plan, and that made me want to know God more intimately, and to cooperate with him (and his graces) more profoundly.

The after-effects of that journey, however, is that I can now see how I am handling myself during this isolation a lot better than if this were to have happened years ago, before my conversion. And today, not only am I able to make this time bearable, but I can also make it fruitful. And regardless of the degree of suffering, you can too.

Entering A New State
The reason for that is because I learned that I could use those experiences to enter more deeply into the Passion of Christ. With all due respect to the profound suffering that people are experiencing, in due time, and with due support, we can choose to enter his passion out of love for him. In doing so, we can more profoundly unite our hearts and our sufferings to his and can begin to walk with Christ in a more intimate way. This might be easier said than done, but it is still something we can set our sights upon as a target.

Through that, however, we can come to see our purpose in a whole new way. Ultimately, of course, our purpose is to work for the salvation of souls. But if we embrace suffering and unite our hearts to the Lord, we can gain a better understanding of what that actually will look like in our lives, and how our choice to do that might impact others in a positive way. Through that, over time, we can gradually shift from wherever we are, into a state of mission—befitting of furthering the Kingdom of God. In that state of mission, we can come to see the suffering is no longer just an occurrence, but rather is an occurrence that we can transform into something better. And that “something better” is penance.

Carrying Our Crosses
If we become engaged in this mission, we ought to not expect that the crosses we are carrying will just go away. Rather, we ought to expect to gain the strength to carry them, and to carry them well, not with resentment and or bitterness, but rather with interior joy and peace—hopefully eventually to the point where it attractively radiates outward from within us. How we get there isn’t to do with the type of sufferings we are faced with during our lives—or whether they become alleviated—but rather is to do with whether we are willing to change our thinking, such that we can willfully accept sufferings as penance instead of experiencing and wasting the suffering altogether.

In other words, if we change our thinking to see that our sufferings can be given as a gift to God by being transformed into a form of penance, then enduring those sufferings can be seen through that new lens; the lens of charity. And when we willfully endure penance with the joy of knowing we are giving the gift of our hearts to the Lord (not that we should seek out the suffering to bring this about), that penance can be used for the good of all humanity; for the eternal salvation of souls!

What a profound gift to give!

A Renewed Sense of Purpose
In transforming our way of thinking like that, we can become renewed with a sense of purpose that will last our entire lives. Also, it will give us the confidence to embrace future inevitable sufferings with courage so we can serve in even a greater capacity.

And that points us to greater intimacy with Christ—in a complete, consistent, and forever type of love.

So, when suffering seemingly becomes too great, or at any point leading up to that threshold, perhaps we can remember that complete, consistent, and forever love, and courageously embrace our sufferings as a penance.

If enough people strive to enact this degree of charity, the face of the entire world would be forever changed for the better.

Hudson Byblow is a Catholic speaker and writer who presents at conferences throughout Canada and the United States. He shares his personal testimony to clergy, schools, and parishes and consults for various Catholic agencies, speakers, and educators. He focuses on his story of overcoming trauma while pursuing greater self-honesty and truth. Today he strives to elevate the conversation through clear language while revealing the joy of living chastely in his newfound freedom in the Lord. His website is www.hudsonbyblow.com.

Do you ever feel that life is unfair? Though we understand that injustice and inequity exist, there is an underlying assumption that if we believe in God, or better yet get God on our side, then the scales of justice and fairness will somehow be tipped in our favor. God will intervene to set things right. The image we often carry of God is one of an all-powerful and grand fixer. But, if we listen carefully to Sacred Scripture and study faith tradition, this is not who God is at all. Our second reading this weekend gives us a great perspective to pursue. “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps. He committed no sin and no deceit was found in his mouth.” If we look to the passion of Christ, we clearly see a God who does not eradicate or sidestep injustice and great suffering but embraces them. If the idea is to somehow get God to remove these painful stumbling blocks from our path, then we would have been given this as the example to follow. Instead, we have been brought through insults, unjust accusations, intense suffering, ridicule and death.

Jesus kept himself intact as he went along the path of the cross. It was this anchored integrity, rooted in a relentless relationship he had with his Father that kept him from anger, bitterness, retaliation, defensiveness, and self-pity. His strong resolution to endure this pain brought him to the place where all pain empties into, the Resurrection. The abundant life Jesus desires us to have is our resurrected life! It is not the promise of an easy meal ticket through this earthly one but the glory of transformation and new life to come. This is where the Good Shepherd’s example leads us. It’s not about finding green and safe pastures here. Believing in Jesus as the Good Shepherd isn’t some form of spiritual “bubble wrap” we roll around ourselves to protect us from all of life’s evils and hardships. This is nowhere near the idea. It certainly was not how the original disciples saw things and the way their lives played out didn’t reflect a God who shielded them from all injury and harm. They encountered quite the opposite. But, they followed the example of their Good Shepherd.

Is your faith in God still strong in the midst of hardship, confusion, anxiety, and suffering? I think that there is a little child in all of us that secretly really wants God to make it all better. Sometimes, that little child is so forward in our personality that God’s response determines our level of faith. But, God is saying, “follow the example I gave you.” Listen to Him. “This is my beloved Son!” We have a hard time with this, and we fight it tug and pull with God all the way! We beg and plead, look for magical prayers, say the right things, storm the doors of heaven, and exhaust ourselves in the process.

Can you love a God who leaves you with your suffering? “The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want.” This means nothing. Nothing includes a resolution to my problem, an avoidance of pain and suffering, the sheltering of someone I love from hardship or death, a tipping of the scales in my favor or anything else we believe we may want. Nothing. My only desire is God and God alone. If I can find this treasure, a relationship with my Creator, the essence and truth of life, then that is ALL that I need. Let God take care of the rest and let it go.

That’s what Jesus, our Good Shepherd, did. He let it go. After he pleaded with God in the garden, he let it go. He realized in the depth of his being that none of this was about his ego or selfpreservation. It’s not about us either and that’s one of the hardest lessons of life to learn. It’s not about us. It is about God and the fact that He lovingly chose to make each of us into the tremendously wonderful person we are, placing the very spark of His Divine Presence within us. All we need is God’s presence. It is enough.

Suffering and hardship are not the enemy but encounters that can bring us deeper into the mystery and wonder of life and of God’s presence. As we embrace every moment of suffering, work through every insult and injustice, find faith, hope, and love in every moment of life’s blessing, we kiss the eternal resurrected presence and life that awaits us. We kiss God.

If we listen deeply and distance ourselves from all the conflicting and distracting voices, this is the Good Shepherd we desperately want to follow. We want ultimately to live and not die. The labor pains we must endure until we get to our eternal destiny are well worth the sacrifice. We will welcome new life just as parents welcome the birth of their child. Suddenly, for the mother who endured all the pains of birth, the experience that seemed relentless and never-ending recedes as the joy and love of birth are ushered in.

Jesus wants to keep us focused. It is too easy to get distracted by this world, as if all that is around us is what is of ultimate importance. It is not. If we pray to keep our focus on Christ and the example he gave us, our loving Good Shepherd will always keep us in his care and never let anyone distract us or lead us astray. If we allow ourselves to be distracted and lured by pastures that may at first appear greener, we can quickly lose our way.

The world struggles with our Good Shepherd. It makes no sense to some why we would believe and pledge our devotion to a God who asks us to accept suffering, injustice, hardship, and death. Coming to a place of acceptance of this does not involve a satisfaction of our minds but a relationship that satisfies our souls and the truth of who we are. Are you willing to leave ALL worldly cares, anxieties and worries behind and return to the true shepherd and guardian of your soul?

Fr. Mark Suslenko is Pastor of the Community of Ss. Isidore and Maria in Glastonbury, CT. Fr. Suslenko publishes reflection articles regularly to his parish’s blog. To read more of Fr. Suslenko’s reflections, visit https://isidoreandmaria.org/category/pastor-reflections/.

The Cathedral Council of Catholic Women and the Knights of Columbus Council #16126 are offering scholarships to students who are:

(1) registered members of the Cathedral parish and
(2) attending a Catholic high school or entering 7th or 8th grade a Catholic grade school in the fall of 2020.

Scholarship applications will be processed electronically this year. Use this link to request an application: https://forms.gle/u2LvujZBbcHhmsBr7.

The deadline to submit completed scholarship applications is midnight on Wednesday, May 13, 2020. Late applications will not be accepted. Please email questions to [email protected].

On this Third Sunday of Easter, the Gospel keeps us on that first Easter Sunday, this time placing us on the road to Emmaus. We are not sure where the exact location of Emmaus was as there were multiple towns named Emmaus that are mentioned in the Scriptures. From St. Luke’s Gospel, we know that the town was outside of Jerusalem about seven miles, not too far since these two disciples were able to make it there in one day’s journey.

I am sure that most of us are familiar with story. Two disciples are walking to Emmaus. It is Sunday, two days after the Crucifixion. These disciples are heartbroken following Good Friday. Their world is further turned upside down because they have heard that Jesus has been raised from the dead. All of this they tell to the stranger who draws near to them on their journey and walks with them. The one who walks with them is no stranger, it is the Lord, but these two disciples are not able to recognize him.

There was an old interpretation of this story that said that the disciples were walking into the sunset, which obscured their sight. The Gospel tells us that it is the end of the day because the disciples invite this stranger to stay with them. While the setting sun may have obscured their sight, it was not what was preventing them from recognizing Jesus who was present to them. The disciples were grieving and rightly so, but their grief as well as possibly their own beliefs of who Jesus should have been or what He should have done was preventing them from seeing Jesus who was right in front of them. As these disciples pour their hearts out to Jesus, He in turn helps them to make sense of all that has happened, putting them back on the road to right spiritual vision which will be fully restored for them later that evening in the breaking of the bread.

The same can be true with us, maybe even right now as we push these days of uncertainty, frustration, fear and, yes, even grief. Life has a way of overwhelming us at times, not allowing us to see things or people clearly for what/who they are and this can happen in our relationship with the Lord. Just like with these disciples, Jesus is near to each and every one of us, whether we recognize Him or not. If we allow Him, our Lord will help us to approach the ups and downs of life with faith and hope. Making sense out of life doesn’t always mean that we will understand the things that happen, but, as disciples, we will be able to place our frustrations, our brokenness, our grief, our fears, and our “whys” into the Lord’s hands, trusting in His goodness.

May the grace of the risen Lord sustain us in these days until we are able to gather together again for the Breaking of the Bread, that is His true presence, when He will remind us in a very real way of the depth of His love for us. No matter what is happening in our lives or the world, if we are walking with Jesus, we are always walking into the sunrise.

Father Christopher House is the Rector of the Cathedral and serves in various leadership roles within the diocesan curia, namely Chancellor and Vicar Judicial.

In my prayer life, I am an exhaustor of options. I wish this meant that I spent hours in contemplation, examining my needs and God’s responses as if marveling at a diamond under a magnifying glass. What it really means is that God is often the last place I bring my fear and worry.

My anxieties first get stuffed away. I minimize and hide them, frustrated that they have once again appeared. When that doesn’t work (it never does), I analyze. I put them to paper, turn them over in my mind, and attempt to calculate their causes and cures on my own. I do this because I fear that God’s attention is finite. If I can only go to him once, my thinking goes, I had better make sure I get the “ask” right. I have a hard time remembering that God wants it all, that I can bring him the mess without first attempting to clean it up on my own.

This methodical and measured approach to comfort-seeking is contrasted by the impulsivity of my 2- year-old son. His cries immediately and urgently ring out, when he is hungry or tired, when he wants help or sympathy, and sometimes for no clear reason at all. Every need, large or small, is loudly and instantly expressed. His demands are exclaimed with the confidence that someone is hearing and receiving, pleas and prayers of their own right.

And out of my infinite love for him, I respond with equal urgency. I place his bicycle back upright on the sidewalk, I retrieve the book he is reaching for, or repeat for the third time that dinner is almost ready. In these moments, I surprise myself with my patience and tenderness. And I wonder, if the human response to these cries is so immediate and attentive, how much stronger and more vast, must the instinct to comfort be for God?

In observing my toddler, I notice what is often missing in my grown-up prayers: a single, instinctual cry. I too often rationalize and reason, dissecting my worry and fear into more manageable pieces before it ever goes to God. When I found myself recently overwhelmed with balancing responsibilities of work and home during this time of quarantine, I parsed out to-do lists and turned to them wildly, looking to control whatever I could. I filled any time I might have had for being with doing, unable to separate out the symptoms of anxiety from their cause and therefore reticent about bringing them to prayer. The impulsiveness of a child buried within, a direct line to the almighty kinked by “shoulds” and “not yets.” This mess, I reasoned, was not yet worthy of God; mine was a thread too twisted and tangled for him to unknot.

We learn to temper and modulate emotion as we age, and this serves us in many instances. Yet the instinct to cry out is still wired within us. We are still those little people, somewhere deep in there. And when we struggle in prayer, I suspect it is those little people God simply wants to hear from. Just as a parent immediately responds to a young child calling for “Mama,” God only needs to hear the call “Abba,” the most tender “Daddy,” to summon his full attention, grace, and love. It is with these simple cries that we humble ourselves and by doing so, grow ever closer to Christ.

I often think of Jesus’ most poignant cry on the cross, visiting this moment as one of the rawest we see in Scripture. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” he cries out. This scene presents in full color, Jesus as man, and simultaneously gives us a model of uninhibited, guttural, instinctual prayer. A holy and productive cry, not unlike the hourly cries of a child. His is a prayer that is immediately and urgently human, and in a language we sometimes forget that God understands.

This Easter Season, particularly with the weight of our world’s current crisis, how are we orienting ourselves as children of God and embracing the humility that comes with it? How can we reconnect with our ability to cry out? And when we sit in that gutwrenching moment on Good Friday, how are we modeling our prayer after Jesus’ own cry long past Easter Sunday?

Christina Ferguson is a nonprofit and corporate senior manager, writer, and mother. Currently serving at Graham-Pelton, Christina has worked with Leadership Roundtable, Georgetown University, Catholic Relief Services, and Ashoka: Innovators for the Public. She holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University and a Bachelor’s of Science in Finance from Villanova University.

How does one write about the joy of the Easter season in the midst of a pandemic? That was the question rattling around my mind for the past few weeks. I don’t want to be a PollyAnna with my head in the sand pretending everything is OK. Everything is not OK. There is real suffering. But I also don’t want to dwell on the negative because that helps no one.

It is important for us to give this season its due because it is the apex of Christianity. Without Jesus’ death and resurrection, we have no chance of eternal life with God. Said Fr. Jean C.J. D’Elbee in I Believe in Love:

“The only real drama is the death of Jesus. All our own dramas are melted into the great drama of Calvary. But that is then followed by His Resurrection and ours.”’

The Pinnacle of Our Faith
So I will attempt to balance between being respectful of the uncertain times and the joyousness of the Easter season. The fifty days from Easter to Pentecost are “characterized by the joy of glorified life and the victory over death, expressed most fully in the great resounding cry of the Christian: Alleluia!” (USCCB)

Yes! Alleluia! These days are to be celebrated as one long, glorious feast. But we start with death because we can only rise if we first die. Memento mori is the consideration of our own death. During a pandemic who among us hasn’t given at least a little more thought to our own demise? It’s going to happen. This is one event we cannot avoid, yet we expend a lot of our resources trying to keep it as far away as possible. Even though we as Catholic Christians believe in heaven, most of us are in no rush to get there.

My husband works with elderly sisters. They are largely unperturbed by this virus because they are OK with their death and ready to go. They have faith that heaven is way better than earth. This is born of a lifetime of Easter seasons. At Easter and during the Easter season, we return to that pinnacle of our faith: Christ’s passion, crucifixion, and resurrection. During Holy Week we immerse ourselves in his suffering. This year especially, we can unite our suffering to his. We let his agony pierce our hearts. We feel the emptiness on Good Friday, the sorrow of knowing our Savior died and not only did he die a horrible, painful, barbaric death, he died because he loves us. He died to expiate our sins.

Dance with Joy!
When God created the world, heaven and earth were united. The pipeline between the two was clear. Adam and Eve enjoyed a loving, comfortable relationship with the Creator. Along galloped sin and that pipeline was destroyed. It was replaced, said St. Catherine of Siena, by an impassable, roaring river. We were unable to cross it on our own. We were separated from God by sin and death. There was no hope. Imagine if that were still the case during this pandemic. People are dying and there is no hope for eternity, just separation from God.

But it’s not like that and that’s why we must rejoice. Jesus’ cross is the bridge that wiped out sin and death. It is the bridge to heaven. It is where our hope comes from.

“Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” (CCC 1817)

If only we could forget each year, the splendorous surprise of Sunday, when he rises victorious over death. If we could enter into Holy Week not remembering the happy ending, we could celebrate even more joyfully and genuinely because Easter is a wild feast. We should be dancing in the streets, exclaiming loudly like fools, dizzy in our happiness. Jesus’ resurrection changed everything.

It changed everything. We don’t need to fear our death because Jesus conquered death. Thanks to him we can live in eternal happiness in heaven with our Father.

So how can we be joyful this season? How can we not? Our future has even more question marks than usual. We are holed up in our homes. Some of us have lost jobs. Our cities are ghostly quiet. We don’t know when it will end and what normal is going to look like when it does, but we know that Jesus is risen and we have a whole season of fifty days to celebrate.

Yep, life is confusing right now but we must be a hopeful people. I say we give this season what is due. We celebrate, we feast, we hope, we bask in the love of God and we place our trust in him. Alleluia! He is risen!

Merridith Frediani’s perfect day includes prayer, writing, unrushed morning coffee, reading, tending to dahlias, and playing Sheepshead with her husband and three teenagers. She loves leading small faith groups for moms and looking for God in the silly and ordinary. She blogs and writes for her local Catholic Herald in Milwaukee.

“That very day, the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ disciples were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. (Luke 24:13-18)

In October 1979, the South American nation of El Salvador entered into a civil war that not only allowed the rise of oppressive military dictators, but which also led to the systematic murder and oppression of tens of thousands of Salvadorans, particularly poor farmers.

Among those who lost their lives defending the rights of the poor and the Church was the archbishop of San Salvador, Saint Oscar Romero (d. March 24, 1980), and four American missionaries: Maryknoll Sisters Maura Clarke and Ita Ford, Ursuline Sister Dorothy Kazel, and lay missionary Jean Donovan (d. December 2, 1980). On November 16, 1989, a group of six Jesuits, along with their housekeeper and her daughter, were shot to death in their shared home because of their support of the poor. The total number of those murdered, raped, and tortured is known only to God.

In the year after the death of Archbishop Romero, the Jesuits of El Salvador began a bi-weekly publication known as Letter to the Churches. The newsletter re-told the stories of those who suffered from violence and terror at the hands of the military junta and its guerilla soldiers.

In one issue, Letter to the Churches shared the testimony of Ismael, a lay catechist, who shared some of his experiences of living with the poor in a war zone, accompanying the people as they fled into the mountains to try to find safety. There, hiding beneath the branches of trees, with stars providing their only light (because the people were afraid to light candles), the people would retell and reflect on the stories of the Gospel. Recalling those terrifying days, Ismael wrote:

We suffer a great deal here. Our bodies are wasting away, and we have many worries. The old people and the children we have to carry concern all of us. We have no money, no clothing, no shoes. But God will look after us. We are going to suffer in this life. These are only the birth pangs, but joy will come. The consoling words of Christ will wipe away every tear. No more will there be crying, pain, worry, or death—everything will pass away. Our hope is to know God. (Quoted in Oscar Romero: Reflections on His Life and Writings by Marie Dennis, Renny Golden, and Scott Wright)

Ismael’s ability to find comfort and even hope in Christ is a powerful witness to us in these Easter days, particularly on this Third Sunday of Easter as we hear the story of the journey to Emmaus.

Saint Luke presents Cleopas and his companion fleeing Jerusalem after the death and burial of Jesus and, although they had heard the testimony of the women that Jesus had been raised from the dead, their disappointment and grief would not allow them to believe such an amazing story. Their despair is captured in one simple but profound statement: “We had hoped…”

And yet, Jesus was there with them, walking with them through their grief, helping them recognize how God had been—and continued to be—at work in the violence of Good Friday and the silence of Holy Saturday. As Father James Martin, SJ, reflected in his book Jesus: A Pilgrimage: “The Risen Christ tells the two disciples that hope is never dead, and nothing is impossible with God. Then he shows them this by revealing himself fully. Seeing this, they are filled with joy. Hope has been rekindled and so their hearts burn. Their first impulse, as always in the Gospels and with us, is to announce the Good News.”

The hope and promise of the Resurrection on that Easter Day was able to dispel the darkness of grief and despair for Cleopas and his friend, just as it did for Ismael and his companions as they hid in the forest in those terrible days in El Salvador.

This is what we celebrate as we continue to celebrate in this Easter Season: The Resurrection shows us that there is always hope and that Christ remains with us, journeying with us as we walk our pilgrim path: “Easter is a shout of victory! No one can extinguish that life that Christ resurrected. Not even death and hatred against him and against his church will be able to overcome it. He is the victor!” (Saint Oscar Romero).

An Invitation for Deeper Reflection

• When have grief, doubt, disappointment, or pain clouded your vision, making God seem far away?
• How is the Good News of Easter inviting you to a new hope, even in these days of quarantine and COVID-19?
• When have you experienced Christ “walking beside” you? In another person? In the words of Scripture, a hymn, or poem? How did it feel when you recognized that he was with you?

A Benedictine monk for nearly 11 years, Br. Silas Henderson, SDS, is an author, retreat leader, and catechist, and former managing editor of Deacon Digest Magazine and Abbey Press Publications. You can find more of Br. Henderson’s blogs at www.fromseason2season.blogspot.com.