Category: From Archbishop Don Bolen

Dear People of the Archdiocese of Regina,

Warm greetings. Well, wintry greetings but with warm good will! This brief message is an overview of the roadmap for our truth and reconciliation journey over the next few weeks.

From December 17th to 20th, an Indigenous delegation will be going to meet Pope Francis in Rome. Its aim is to create meaningful encounters of dialogue and healing, and to prepare the Pope for his pastoral visit to Canada. As you know, in late September the Catholic Bishops of Canada offered an unequivocal apology to Indigenous Peoples, which provides a context for the forthcoming trip to Rome as a step towards reconciliation.

Like our own process of the sacrament of reconciliation, we begin by acknowledging the truths of where and how we as Catholics have been the source of deep pain and wounds; what we have done and what we have failed to do. Pope Francis will have an opportunity to hear about the effects of colonization, the signing and breaking of treaties, the legacy of residential schools, and intergenerational trauma. Many of the stories he will hear will touch these painful truths, and that is an essential step towards healing that will lead to a meaningful encounter and relationship building.

Let us be in solidarity with this Indigenous delegation and the efforts of the Canadian Church as it takes steps on this healing and reconciling journey. Truth, new beginnings and right relationships pave the way towards Reconciliation.

Let us embark on this journey following the movement of the Advent liturgical cycle, beginning with the feast of Christ the King, by entering into the five stage process of the sacrament of reconciliation: examine, confession, repentance, reparation and reconciliation. Each week we will provide educational opportunities to better understand our history and current challenges.

A key landmark on this journey will be December 12th, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, when the Church in Canada celebrates The National Day of Prayer in Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples. This initiative, coordinated since 2002 by the CCCB Advisory group the Canadian Catholic Indigenous Council, marks this feast as a day of prayer, solidarity and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patron of the Americas, appeared in Mexico in 1531 as an Indigenous woman to St Juan Diego, whose Indigenous name was Cuauhtlatoatzin (“Eagle Who Speaks”), and spoke to him in his Indigenous language of Nahuatl. She is wearing the black sash around her waist which is an Aztec Maternity Belt that Mexican women would wear to indicate they were with child.

On this day, December 12th, we will have a special pew collection, in which parishioners across our archdiocese will be able to support the TRC Healing Response. Together, we can pool our resources to support Indigenous-led initiatives to assist in repairing the wounded relationships of the past.

Our Lady of Guadalupe calls us to stand in solidarity with Indigenous Peoples. Through her intercession may we as a church give birth to new relationships and a new way of walking together on the road to reconciliation.

Watch video message HERE

Warm greetings in the Lord.

A short time before this video message was filmed, our Premier announced that further restrictions are being imposed on Regina and surrounding area because of the recent spike in cases of a Covid variant. Regina residents may not expand their household bubble, and all indoor gatherings are restricted to immediate household members only. Restaurants and licensed establishments must close for in-person dining. Many event venues and non-essential indoor locations are temporarily closed. Travel is not recommended in or out of the Regina area unless absolutely necessary. If you live in Regina, now is not the time to go to visit family who live outside of the city. The press release noted that if we undergo these restrictions for 2 to 4 weeks, it could turn the situation around quickly.

Places of worship for Regina and area, however, remain at the current capacity level, which is capped at 30 persons. I join many in expressing profound gratitude that at a time of significant restrictions, places of worship in Regina and area have not been further restricted. It is an acknowledgment that we offer something that is essential to the well-being of many in our society. Faith leaders argued strongly that worship services, with very rare exceptions, have not been places where the virus has spread, and that we have been diligent in taking all the precautionary steps asked of us. With the gift that we have not been shut down – as many other public places have been – comes the responsibility and obligation to be exceedingly careful over the coming days.

It is an extraordinary situation we find ourselves in as a society. Earlier today I had the opportunity to have a conversation with an infectious disease physician, who wanted to speak to me about the current medical crisis in Regina. The large and exponentially rising number of cases of the Covid variant in the city has caused incredible stress on the health system here. The variant spreads more quickly, is more dangerous, than the original strain, and the risk of the situation getting further out of hand is real, potentially resulting in many more cases, many more deaths. At the same time, efforts to provide a vaccine have accelerated in the area, and access to a vaccine is proceeding much more quickly than anticipated. In this race between the virus variant and the vaccine, it is clearly time for decisive action.

All of this is playing out for us, as Christian community, at the holiest time of the year. It feels brutal that we are at a critical juncture in dealing with this pandemic precisely in Holy Week, for the second year in a row. But suffering and brutal experience are right at home in Holy Week. We are about to celebrate Palm Sunday, a liturgy which begins with the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem; but that joy soon dissipates and turns into the procession to calvary, where the Lord is taunted, beaten, crowned with thorns, and crucified. Palm Sunday takes us from promise to pain, as the one who came to bring life is put to death. The deeper narrative, of course, is of a love which gives of itself fully, and this death will not have the last word.

I was recently reminded of a theological reflection which noted, there are some who say, ‘things are always getting worse in the world’ – as the saying goes, ‘we are going to hell in a handbasket’ – and others note that ‘things are always getting better,’ though it is a bumpy road. It is easy enough for both schools of thought to find ample evidence to back their arguments. A deeper truth is that these two trajectories are not opposed, that things can indeed get better and worse at the same time. And they do. Indeed they are.

In the Palm Sunday liturgy, we hear of an incredible darkness, as the Word through whom all things came to being was silenced, put to death, buried in a tomb. But as St. Paul notes, where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. An incredible grace is also in evidence, a love which knows no bounds. Love and death are caught in a great showdown. Palm Sunday leaves us there.

Our pandemic also has us in a showdown, as the rampant spread of a Covid variant is confronted by our best communal efforts to protect the vulnerable and to defeat a virus that can bring death.

Friends, in this drama unfolding in our midst, just as in the drama that we are drawn into in the Palm Sunday liturgy and in Holy Week, we are not passive bystanders. We’re all called to participate in this drama, in this struggle between life and death. Let me suggest three ways in which we can do so.

Firstly, we can take all the precautions that we are asked to take. While parishes have not been vectors of the virus spreading, we need to be especially vigilant now. We do well to take seriously the travel advisory issued for Regina and area communities. Outside of Regina, in other parts of the Archdiocese, we need to be very cautious as well, as we enter into Holy Week with an easing of restrictions; it’s not a time to ease up on our attentiveness to detail.

Secondly, we can enter deeply into the celebrations of the coming days, whether in person or virtually. These celebrations take us to the heart of our faith. In accompanying the Lord to the cross and ultimately to the resurrection, we can find a wellspring of hope and joy that is very deep, because it is born out of the worst that human life can bring, and proclaims that life and love have the last word.

Finally, tomorrow, Thursday, we celebrate the great Feast of the Annunciation, centred upon Mary’s faith-filled response to the Angel Gabriel: “let it be done unto me according to thy word.” Mary’s yes opens the door to God’s desire to come and dwell in our midst. Let us ponder and emulate Mary’s openness to the will of God and her embrace of the mystery of God’s great desire to come into our midst. Let us accept the invitation and do our part in God’s great dream of transforming and redeeming the world from within, be walking with us, dying and rising for us.

Let’s close with a prayer that brings together some of the strands in this meandering meditation:

Lord Jesus, you came among us to bring life. In your suffering and death, you revealed a boundless love. In your resurrection you plant the seeds of a hope within us which can withstand darkness and pain. Be with us now in this time of pandemic. Protect us, watch over all our medical professionals, and all who are doing all they can to accompany those who are suffering and to prevent the further spread of the virus. Give us courage as we face our own struggles, frustrations and darkness at this time. May we always know your Risen presence. Fill us with your Holy Spirit. Help us to offer our fiat, to say to you with our whole hearts and our whole lives, “let it be done unto me according to thy will.” Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Watch full message HERE

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ of the Archdiocese of Regina, and all viewers,

Warm greetings in the Lord. This coming Sunday, the 4^th Sunday of Lent, marks the middle of Lent, and is traditionally called Laetare Sunday. Laetare means ‘rejoice’, and the tradition of a day of rejoicing in the middle of Lent is an old one. The opening antiphon sets the tone, drawing on passages from Isaiah and the Psalms, as it proclaims, “Rejoice, Jerusalem, and all who love her. Be joyful, all who were in mourning…”

I was part way through preparation for this message when the news broke yesterday that restrictions on faith communities are easing up as of March 19, and we will be returning to 30% capacity, up to 150 persons, as long as all the other protective measures are kept. That is definitely cause for rejoicing. March 19^th is the Feast of St Joseph, and on this Year of St Joseph, we will have additional reason to celebrate.

Tomorrow, that is Thursday March 11^th, we will be marking one year of the pandemic in Saskatchewan. A vigil is be held virtually ( https://www.covidvigil.ca/ ), with the title, ‘Together in Remembrance, Together in Hope’. As society and as church, we can use a boost in terms of hope. The joy quotient was getting pretty low out there. When Lent rolled around this year, more than one person said to me, we started Lent a year ago and it’s like it’s never left. The challenges, experienced on so many levels, have left many feeling rather raw, and our communal and individual wounds and tensions have been in full display.  The level of frustration and grumpiness has been higher in recent days than I can ever remember. Yesterday’s announcement means that many more people will be able to take part, in person, in Holy Week and Easter celebrations. For this we give great thanks.

But the joy and hope which Easter bring are meant to resonate at a much deeper level than the good news of easing restrictions. Even as tensions around covid start to ease, we know well that human life in general, and life in the Year of Our Lord 2021 in particular, is marked by a seemingly endless set of challenges and tensions.

Years ago I came across a quote from Pope Paul VI, from 1975, late in his papacy, when the tensions surrounding the Encyclical Humanae Vitae were in full bloom, and the Pope was being seen as indecisive and trapped. In that context, Pope Paul wrote down these words: “What is my state of mind? Am I Hamlet or Don Quixote? On the left?  On the right? I don’t feel I have been properly understood.  My feelings are ‘Superabundo Gaudio’, I am full of consolation, overcome with joy, throughout every tribulation.” Superabundo Gaudio, overflowing with joy. He is quoting St Paul to the Corinthians (2 Cor 7:4), who was also writing in the context of significant tensions. 

Dear brothers and sisters in the Lord, how do we find our way to that place, a place where we carry a deep internal joy despite the brokenness of our world and the stresses within ourselves? That is a very good Lenten question.

In this coming Sunday’s Gospel, we hear about Nicodemus, an influential Jewish leader who comes to Jesus at night, under the cover of darkness, searching for understanding. Nicodemus is obviously attracted by Jesus’s ministry and teachings, as he says, “we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” But he is also puzzled. I think we can understand him as a person who is struggling to believe. He is a helpful person for us to accompany, for many of us can relate to that struggle. Jesus speaks to him about the need to be born from above, to be born of water and Spirit. He shares with Nicodemus that he will be lifted up, foreshadowing his death on the cross, and speaks these beautiful words that we know well: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). 

We don’t hear how Nicodemus reacted, but we do hear of him again later, speaking in the Sanhedrin for the need for a fair trial, and then present after Jesus’ death on the cross, providing spices for the burial as was the custom.

I encourage you, and myself, let’s go to Jesus as Nicodemus did. Let us present him with our questions, our struggles, our wounds. Jesus told Nicodemus that light had come into the world, a light which exposes our darkness, and we might add, brings healing, and renewal. Jesus’ words didn’t likely answer all of Nicodemus’s questions, but the conversation led him to accompany Jesus on the road that led to his death and ultimately to his resurrection. The Lord extends that same invitation to us. He allows us to live in the tensions of the present moment, in the incompleteness of our lives, but to do so with hope. And to see things in a paschal way.

I have a poster near my desk these days which reads: “Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried, but you’ve actually been planted.” It takes faith and trust to see things that way when we’re feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, or buried.

We are living in this time between Winter and Spring. Many of us have the experience that when we leave work, we now drive home in the sun. The days are getting longer. We yearn for more light, and we know it is coming. The earth is still frozen, but it is starting to give way to warmer days. That is a good Lenten metaphor. The light is coming into the world. Three weeks from now we will gather, or watch on livestream, as we light the paschal candle in the darkness and proclaim the victory of life over death. Let us trust that light and go to the Lord in order that God’s light might find its way into all the corners of our hearts and our lives that need to be touched by its healing rays.

As we listen to the splendid hymn “Now the Green Blade Riseth,” let’s pray with the help of the first and last verses:

Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,

Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain;

Love lives again, that with the dead has been:

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,

Jesus’ touch can call us back to life again,

Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

Watch video Message HERE

Dear friends in Christ in the Archdiocese of Regina, and all listeners, warm greetings. We are now two weeks into Lent, and the church extends a word to us, to persevere in opening ourselves to the Holy Spirit on this Lenten journey.

This coming Sunday, the third Sunday of Lent, we will hear St. John’s account of the cleansing of the Temple. And at the end of the Gospel reading, there’s a sentence that jumped out at me this year – in part because I was working with a different translation of the Bible. It’s interesting how different translations can bring new insights and allow us to hear new things in the text. The translation I’m used to working with, the NRSV on which our lectionary is based, leads us to understand that Jesus knew what was in the hearts of those who were critical of his actions, when it says that he “needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone.” But the NAB makes the statement more general: Jesus “did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well.”

The Lord knows the human heart. God knows us, knows us well, knows us better than we know ourselves. As the wonderful Psalm 139 proclaims:

O Lord, you search me and you know me,
you know my resting and my rising,
you discern my purpose from afar.
You mark when I walk or lie down,
all my ways lie open to you.
For it was you who created my innermost being,
knit me together in my mother’s womb.

There is great consolation in this. God knows our wounds, the ones that are deepest within us; knows our deepest desires, the ones that motivate us most profoundly; knows our gifts, our joys, our sins, our brokenness, our dreams. I sometimes pray these words from William Wordsworth, celebrating the human condition authored and loved by God:

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

But God also knows that the human heart needs work, our hearts need work, need transformation and renewal. Jesus doesn’t go into our hearts as he went into the temple, throwing out everything that doesn’t belong there, but the Holy Spirit would like to have a go at uncluttering the temple of our hearts. I think it is the Holy Spirit that whispers to me each Lent that old Chinese proverb, ‘if you do not change directions, you are likely to end up where you are heading.’

After Jesus had cleansed the temple, those present asked him for a sign to show what authority he had to go into the temple and throw out the money changers. They are in effect saying give us a sign that allows us to believe in you. He responds enigmatically, mysteriously, “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” In Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus is asked for a sign, he says the only sign he will give them is the sign of Jonah, who spent three days in the belly of the whale.

What sign do we look for that would allow us to trust more deeply that God is lovingly present in our lives? What sign would ease our doubts and lift our fears? As it was for the disciples who followed Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, so to for us – the ultimate sign Jesus gives a paschal sign. It’s about dying and rising. It is the lived sign of being willing to give himself completely in love, unto death. And the revelation that death is not the last word for God, that after three days, Jesus is raised from the dead. The full revelation of God in Jesus’ dying and rising addresses directly the deepest questions that arise from our human experience, questions about suffering and injustice and death.

In this coming Sunday’s second reading, St. Paul says that while others seek signs and look for wisdom, “we proclaim Christ crucified,” which will seem foolish, but “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.”

This coming Friday, March 5, is the World Day of Prayer, and its theme this year is ‘Build on a Strong Foundation.’ When we pray, we may look for specific outcomes that seem good to us. I believe that God does answer our prayers, but not by allowing us to bypass suffering and death. God draws us into the paschal experience that life is stronger than death, that God can bring life from the ashes of our brokenness. On the cross, Jesus entered into the place of greatest vulnerability. And God invites us too into places of great vulnerability, not to abandon us, but to reveal to us what resurrection might look like in the face of our deepest wounds and brokenness.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I encourage you to invite the Holy Spirit into your lives anew this Lent, asking the Spirit to cleanse our hearts and lead us to a deeper trust in God and in the life God gives us. Join me in praying, if you will, this prayer of Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.

God bless!

Watch the video message HERE

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ in the Archdiocese, and all tuning in for this message for the second week of Lent, warm greetings.

Thankfully, our polar vortex is behind us now. The word Lent comes from the old English word ‘Lenten’, which means Spring. In this province Spring comes slowly, and that serves as a good metaphor for Lent, and the slow transformation of ourselves into people of the Kingdom. In the early church, the desert fathers and mothers went to live in the wilderness in order to open themselves completely to the transformative grace of God in their lives. They called the desert the furnace of transformation. That’s also a good image for Lent.

We view Lent, among other things, as a time of sacrifice, and we prayerfully ponder what we are going to give up for Lent. That is good and right, but the readings from the second Sunday of Lent put the whole question of sacrifice into a larger framework. And they also give us a window into the transformation that God desires for us.

The first reading for this coming Sunday, from the book of Genesis, tells the story of Abraham bringing Isaac up the mountain, where he has been asked to sacrifice his son. A few chapters earlier in the Book of Genesis, we hear the beautiful account of God bringing Abraham outside at night and asking him to look up at the sky and count the stars if he can – which of course he can’t – and then says, so shall your descendants be. Abraham’s wife Sarah was without child. When the whole thing seemed pretty much hopeless, Abraham being 100 years old and Sarah 90, Sarah bore a child. And they called him Isaac, which means laughter, because they were so taken by surprise. So Isaac was not only Sarah and Abraham’s beloved child, he was also the visible sign, the testimony that God’s promise would hold true. There would be no descendants without Isaac.

Of course God intervenes, Isaac is saved, and Abraham is praised for his trust, and God provides an offering for the sacrifice. The story in its origins was probably intended to show, among other things, that the God of Abraham did not desire the child sacrifice practiced by some neighbouring religions. I once had the opportunity to hear an inter-faith discussion about this passage, as it is of great importance to Jews and Muslims as well as to Christians. The different schools of interpretation of this story make for a fascinating conversation.

But for us on this second Sunday of Lent, the Abraham and Isaac story is linked to two other readings. In today’s Gospel, we hear Mark’s account of the transfiguration. Jesus and his disciples are on the road to Jerusalem, and he has been telling them that he is going to be put to death, and that he will rise again. They are bewildered and frightened. Then he takes three of them, Peter, James and John, up the mountain. Like the first reading, it’s on the mountain that something new is being revealed about God. For a brief moment, the disciples see Jesus in dazzling light, speaking with the great prophets of the past, Moses and Elijah. Here is the one they have been following, now seen as the fulfillment of their deepest hopes. They hear the voice of God saying ‘this is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him.’ Peter wants to hold on to the experience, wants to build tents for them, wants it to last. It doesn’t last. But it gives them a glimpse of what is to come, and perhaps the strength to live through the passion and crucifixion of Jesus without losing all hope.

In the second reading, one of the most important passages of the entire New Testament, St Paul, with the story of the sacrifice of Isaac in mind, and above all with the death and resurrection of Christ in mind, writes to the Romans and asks rhetorically, if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but handed him over for us all, how will he not also give us everything else along with him? Paul will go on to offer us two great litanies to communicate how nothing can get in the way of God’s love for us revealed in Jesus Christ.

Let’s go back to where we started to the question of sacrifice, and the matter of our transformation. In the history of religion, there are numerous stories of people offering sacrifices to God that bring reconciliation and God’s blessing. But the Christian vision is different. God is the key actor. On the cross, God is the one who offers God’s own self, in the person of Jesus, to heal the broken relationship. As we pray at Mass, Christ became “the Priest, the Altar and the Lamb of sacrifice.” It’s not ultimately about what we sacrifice in order to win God’s pleasure, it’s about embracing the wonderful gift of God’s own self, and being transformed by that.

The transformation that the season promises is a paschal transformation. God draws us into his dying and rising, and invites us to live in the freedom of those who in turn can spend ourselves at the service of others, because we are loved by a boundless unimaginable love.

Friends, please join me in praying the Peace Prayer of St Francis of Assisi, who grasped at a very deep level the change that God desires for us:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.

O Master, let me not seek as much
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in self-forgetting that we find,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
it is in dying that we are raised to eternal life.

Video Message found here

Greetings, brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Ash Wednesday, as we embark on the Lenten journey.

The season of Lent provides us with 40 days to let God’s transforming grace into our lives in a new way, so that we might live more deeply, more faithfully, with greater joy, hope, conviction and compassion. I think most of us would acknowledge that there’s lots of room for growth in that regard in our lives.

In preparation for this week’s message, one of my working group colleagues mentioned the film Groundhog Day, which I went back to watch, after many years. The film is something of a parable about moral growth. The main character, at the start of the film, is something of a scoundrel, completely self-centered, arrogant and obnoxious, and on the first day of the film, Groundhog Day, he acts like a complete jerk. The next morning when he wakes up, he discovers, to his complete bewilderment, that he has woken up to the same day all over again. No one else is reliving that day, but he is. This happens over and over again through the film, presumably thousands of times. He keeps living the same day over and over again, and only he is aware of that. He is able to change the decisions he makes each day, and to see the consequences of those decisions. At the start, once he has gotten past the bewilderment with what is happening, he uses the information from previous days for his own selfish ends. Seeing the futility of it all, he falls into a kind of a depression, and tries to end it all. That doesn’t work. He keeps waking up to Groundhog Day. Eventually he starts to have some empathy for others, and slowly starts to move out of his self-centredness, and to use what he has learned to start helping others. Finally, finally, he lives the day well enough that when he wakes up, it’s actually February 3rd.

The film is based on a simple clever hypothesis: what if we would live the same day over and over again until we got it right, until we lived it well. We don’t, life isn’t structured that way. But life is structured in such a way that each new day we get a chance to begin again, to try to live better. In some sense, God has structured the human condition in such a way that we are invited to learn from each previous day and to grow in wisdom, compassion, holiness, hope and joy.

That takes us back to the season of Lent, 40 days to give particular focus to God’s transformative desires for us, and the need to open to that grace. In a recent reflection, our Archdiocesan theologian Brett Salkeld noted that the biblical focus on 40 – 40 days after the flood, Israel wondering 40 years in the desert, Jesus praying 40 days in the wilderness – is likely connected to the reality that 40 is the number of weeks a human child gestates in its mother’s womb. Brett notes that when the Bible uses the number 40, it is telling us that something is gestating, something new is preparing to be born. That’s a good mindset for us at the start of the season of Lent. What is God trying to bring to birth in us?

In the film Groundhog Day, the character has a seemingly endless opportunity to make changes, to live better. We have been given time by God. As Annie Dillard notes, time is one thing “we have been given, and we have been given to time. [And] time gives us a whirl.” But time is not endless, and our opportunities to make changes are not endless. Listen to this insightful quote from the novel The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles, who writes:

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

Time is not endless. One thing Jesus seems to insist upon with his disciples is that the time for change, for conversion, for holiness, is now. His opening proclamation in Mark’s Gospel is this: the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, that is, change your ways, and believe the good news.

So as we embark on this season of Lent, I think we do well to acknowledge that we need Lent, we need a time of renewal, we need God, we need mercy. Lent begins by being signed with ashes, in the form of a cross, though this year, because of pandemic protocols, the ashes will be gently dropped on us. But you can imagine them in the form of a cross on your forehead. The ashes are a sign of our woundedness, a reminder of the reality of death, of brokenness, of things falling apart. A reminder of our society as it is… ourselves as we are, beneath the facades of wellness and wholeness.

Lent doesn’t leave us in ashes. It moves us towards resurrection. It moves us towards God’s ability and desire to turn our darkness into light, our selfishness into other-centredness, our sinfulness to holiness – if and as we open ourselves to God’s redeeming grace. So let us embark upon this season not with fear and trepidation, but with a sense of relief, a sense of awakening to the need for real change, and a trust in God’s merciful desire to bring about that change, in us, and in our communities.

In each weekly Lenten message, I will draw on a prayer or two from our tradition, and in this first Lenten reflection, I would invite you to listen to the words, addressed to God, from the Preface to the first Eucharistic Prayer for Reconciliation, which can be used all year round, but is especially timely for Lent:

O God, “you do not cease to spur us on to possess a more abundant life and, being rich in mercy, you constantly offer pardon and call on sinners to trust in your forgiveness alone. Never did you turn away from us, and, though time and again we have broken your covenant, you have bound the human family to yourself through Jesus your Son, our Redeemer, with a new bond of love so tight that it can never be undone. Even now you set before your people a time of grace and reconciliation, and, as they turn back to you in spirit, you grant them hope in Christ Jesus and a desire to be of service to all, while they entrust themselves more fully to the Holy Spirit.”

Let’s end with the Anima Christi:

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O Good Jesus, hear me.
Within your wounds hide me.
Permit me not to be separated from you.
From the wicked foe, defend me.
At the hour of my death, call me
and bid me come to you
That with your saints I may praise you
For ever and ever. Amen.

Watch video message HERE

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

One of Advent’s greatest treasures, especially in the days directly leading up to Christmas, is the the ‘O antiphon’ tradition. Many who may not be acquainted directly with the O antiphons will likely know them through the verses of the much loved hymn O Come O Come Emmanuel. The O antiphons are used as antiphons for the Magnificat each of the seven days leading up to Christmas in the Catholic Church’s evening prayer, and are generally used as part of the Gospel Alleluia at Mass those days. The tradition dates back to the early Middle Ages. In more recent times, some Anglican, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches also incorporate the O antiphons in their prayer and devotional life.

Each O antiphon draws on a prophecy from Isaiah; each offers a title for the promised Messiah and expresses our longing and need for God to come into our world. The original prayers were of course written in Latin. Let’s take a look at one of them in more detail. Isaiah had prophecied, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them a light has shone” (Is. 9:2). The O antiphon begins, “O Oriens,

splendor lucis aeternae,” O Morning Star, splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:

Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.” We know this as the verse from O Come O Come Emmanuel as follows:

O come, Thou Dayspring, from on high,

And cheer us by Thy drawing nigh;

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night,

And death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Each verse of the hymn ends with the invitation:

Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel

Shall come to thee, O Israel.

And so the days leading up to Christmas unfold, as do the verses of the hymn, and we pray:

O come, Emmanuel, ransom us from our captivity;

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, give us victory o’er the grave;

O come, Thou Wisdom from on high – teach us in her ways to go;

O come, Desire of nations, bind all peoples in one heart and mind; bid envy, strife and quarrels cease; fill the whole world with heaven’s peace.

It is helpful that we have multiple images from the prophets for the Messiah who was to come. As Christians we have four Gospels who speak of Jesus’s life and ministry from different perspectives. The Incarnation is a vast mystery, and each prophecy gives us a language to understand something of what God desires to do for us. They tap into our own need for wisdom, for leadership and covenental love, for freedom from what binds us, light within our darkest days, for God walking with us.

St Augustine, in an ‘O’ prayer of his own, prays to God, “O Beauty ever ancient, ever new,” and that has set me to pondering how the glories of our heritage still speak to the deepest yearnings of our hearts; and that today we too are to give new expressions to those deepest yearnings within us. The Jewish roots of the prophecies bring to mind new expressions of yearnings in our day from that same tradition. I don’t know if Leonard Cohen had the O antiphons in mind when he wrote to song Come Healing, but he might have.

O solitude of longing

Where love has been confined

Come healing of the body

Come healing of the mind.

O see the darkness yielding

That tore the light apart

Come healing of the reason

Come healing of the heart.

And finally:

O let the heavens falter

And let the earth proclaim:

Come healing of the Altar

Come healing of the Name.

So here’s an invitation and a challenge, friends. As you prepare to welcome the Lord’s birth, take some time to listen to the deepest yearnings in your heart. And in the refining of prayer, see if those yearnings might take the shape of a prayer or two, your own O antiphons.

O font of mercy, O God of all grace, come be with us in this time of pandemic. Let us know your healing presence, let us see your face.

God bless.

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One of my earliest memories of Advent, in the little country church of St. Elizabeth’s west of Gravelbourg, was the singing of the hymn O Come, Divine Messiah. When I was seven years old, we left the farm and moved to Gravelbourg itself, where our faith life was enriched by the traditions of the majority francophone community, and I learnt that there was a French version of the hymn too, that it was originally written in French: Venez Divin Messie. On this second week of Advent, I would like to offer a few reflections on the season, with reference to this wonderful hymn.

We often say that Advent is a season of waiting, and in the midst of this pandemic, we know the experience of waiting. When we hear “O Thou whom nations sighed for,” the words resonate, for the nations today are definitely sighing. Advent invites us to set our sights on the deepest sighing of the nations, the most profound sighing in human hearts, as we sing “Come, come to earth, dispel the night and show thy face, and bid us hail the dawn of grace.” Advent waiting is active, not passive. And it is meant to teach us something, to prepare us to welcome the coming of God into our lives. John the Baptist cries out in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight his paths. Let the valleys be raised and every mountain and hill be made low. Here on the flat prairies of Saskatchewan we are well on our way, at least from the perspective of landscape! It’s the rest of our lives that need transforming.

The hymn O Come Divine Messiah reminds us how much we need God. We know it from the mess and woundedness in our lives, and we know it from the brokenness in our world. And it prepares us to recognize and welcome God in all the ways that God comes into our lives. The last verse reminds us that God does not come in the way we would necessarily expect: Shalt come in peace and meekness, and lowly will thy cradle be: All clothed in human weakness shall we thy God-head see.

Advent is a time where we hear of God’s dream for the human race. We hear this strongly in the readings of the prophets: that people that walked in darkness will see a great light; that God is preparing a rich banquet, where all our tears will be wiped away and death will be no more; that the wolf shall live with the lamb, calf and the lion will lie down together, and all will be well on God’s holy mountain; that God will turn our swords into ploughshares, and nations shall not lift up sword against nation. These dreams of God may be hard for us to believe and trust in. In this Sunday’s second reading we hear that God does not delay in fulfilling his promises, but that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. These Advent missives of hope and promise are like a plow that tills the furrows of our hearts, to loosen our doubts and break up the cynicism or despair that may have grown in us. We hear the dream of God in O Come, Divine Messiah too. The captive fetters will be broken, the long-lost fold redeemed; the night will be dispelled; we will hail the dawn of grace, and see God’s face. When life is full of difficulties and challenges, it is a tremendous act of courage to continue to dream God’s dream, to continue to hope, and to carry a deep joy within us.

One final thought, and one last theme in this Sunday’s readings. Both Isaiah and John the Baptist speak about the pathway of our God. In the desert, in the wilderness, prepare the way. A few years ago I had the opportunity to walk the camino in Spain, an 800 kilometre trek from St Jean Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago de Compostela. ‘Camino’ literally means ‘the way.’ On the road to Santiago, the way is marked out by yellow arrows. You need to stay vigilant, otherwise you get lost in a hurry. Each yellow arrow quietly speaks the message that we hear from Isaiah, who exhorts, “This is the way, walk in it” (Is 30:21), and Jeremiah, who relates: “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls” (Jer 6:16). In Advent, we are encouraged to walk the good way, to prepare the way of the Lord. But the heart of the message of the season is this: our God comes walking towards us on this path. Like a shepherd seeking out lost sheep, God comes to seek us out. There is a story in the Jewish Talmud of a king who had a son who had gone astray. The king sent a message to the son, return to your father. The son sent a message, I cannot. The king sent another message. Come as far as you can, and I will come to you the rest of the way. Our God comes to us not because we are good, or holy, or deserving, or ready. But out of love. O Come, Divine Messiah, the world in silence waits the day when hope shall sing its triumph and sadness flee away.

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Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Warm greetings and good wishes of perseverance and hope at this difficult time, when the number of active cases in Saskatchewan have risen dramatically. For many, in the past two weeks, including myself, the pandemic has become real in a new way, as family members, friends, or people we know well have tested positive, are in ICU, or have died. We lift all those who have died and their loved ones, all who have tested positive for Covid and their families, in fervent prayer before the Risen Lord.

As you know, new restrictions have been put in place regarding mask usage, affecting all the parishes of the Archdiocese. The Saskatchewan Health Authority and provincial government have not imposed further restrictive steps on faith communities at this time, but have continued their conversation with faith leaders, and have let us know that there are cases of the virus having spread in worship settings in the province. They have not moved to lockdown, but have arranged a series of urgent meetings, asking what we can do and what we would recommend so that we mitigate risks, encourage adherence to the directives, and reduce movement and duration during worship services. I am grateful for the spirit of consultation which is now prevailing.

As we approach the great feast of Christ the King, I am reminded of all the places in which we are called to allow Christ to be our King: our hearts, wills, societies, the world around us. When the feast was instituted by Pope Pius XI, he wanted to invite the faithful to participate in the challenges and struggles of the societies in which they lived, but to do so mindful of a higher authority. Political structures have a rightful place in our lives, but also limits, and our ultimate authority is Christ the King. When the re-open Saskatchewan plan was first announced in late April and there was no mention of religious groups and how they would be able to safely gather, we joined with faith leaders from across the province to approach our Premier with the hope of beginning a dialogue about the importance of religious gatherings. As Catholics and citizens, we recognize that civic and health authorities have an important role to play, but we also wanted them to hear what faith communities could provide to our society at a time of deep struggle, in terms of hope, of maintaining a safe environment, and of caring for the vulnerable. The fruits which have come from these dialogues and deeper relationships are most evident in the greater numbers that our spaces are allowed than other public gatherings. While more changes are likely to come, it is helpful to remember the words of Pope Pius XI in the encyclical which instituted the feast: “there seems no reason why we should despair of seeing that peace which the King of Peace came to bring on earth – he who came to reconcile all things, who came not to be ministered unto but to minister, who, though Lord of all, gave himself to us as a model of humility, and with his principal law united the precept of charity” (20).

This year on the feast of Christ the King, we will hear the powerful words of Matthew 25 and Jesus’s parable of the last judgement. Jesus our king gives us a word, a word to live by, a difficult and challenging word. The word comes in the form of a question, the last question we are ever likely to hear. The parable tells us that at the end of time, when death is conquered and God is all in all, when we stand before the risen Lord, he will ask: when I was hungry, did you give me food? When I was thirsty, did you give me something to drink? When I was sick, or in prison, did you visit me? When I was a stranger, did you welcome me? The Incarnate Word identifies himself with those in greatest need, and tells us that we encounter him there, in what Mother Teresa refers to as Christ in his most distressing disguise.

The questions ought to make us restless, uncomfortable. They are not new; we know them, we have heard them before. Indeed if we listen closely, we hear them being asked to us daily in a thousand different ways. Sometimes it’s a beggar on the street who asks them to us; sometimes it is a victim of clergy sexual abuse who wants to be heard and respected. Sometimes it is an Indigenous brother or sister who needs help, and sometimes it’s a family member or neighbour who is struggling. Sometimes it is the unborn or those at the end of life who are pushed aside, and sometimes it’s a saint, like John Chrysostom, who reminds us that an afflicted sister or brother is “the most precious temple of all.” Sometimes it’s Pope Francis, who tells us he prefers a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, and sometimes it’s a critic of the church, who points out our lack of integrity.

As we prepare to celebrate the Feast of Christ the King, let us renew our commitment to love and welcome the Lord in all the ways he comes to us. Let us participate in our civic life, work with our elected officials and health authorities, and do all we can to protect the vulnerable. And in all that, let us be guided above all by the Lord, who immerses himself in the sufferings and struggles of humanity and asks us to love and serve him there: Christ our King.

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