Holy Week Reflection

Mike Fenn and Fr. Dan Riley, OFM, offer us the gift of their reflections for this Holy Week.
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By Mike Fenn

Our sojourner group recently spent a weekend in reflection on Francis’ celebration of the Incarnation – of God coming to earth in the form of Man. We learned that Francis considered Christmas “The Feast of all Feasts” because it meant that the divine is here on Earth, not just up in the heavens. With this perspective, I sit here on Palm Sunday thinking about the upcoming week Jesus endured. The jubilation of his entrance in Jerusalem, the bittersweet mix of companionship and betrayal experienced with His Brothers at the Last Supper, the incredible angst He endured in dialogue with His Father in the garden. And the humiliation, pain and suffering that took place on the day of His death.

From my own experience I know life can bring emotional ups and downs as well - the jubilation of living in a house filled with love to the angst of raising a family in times of moral indifference and economic uncertainty. The companionship of being blessed with good friends made over the years, to the difficulty of watching our adolescents find their way, their identity, and sometimes experience rejection from others. Finally the pain and suffering we are witnessing this very day – a teenager we know passing over after battling cancer for years; someone close to us admitted to the hospital with heart problems.

It can be easy to focus on this Holy Week and – using words Fr. Dan shared with me while collaborating on our reflections – “get lost in the dark.” Jesus experienced sin in many ways on the day of his death. Yet we know what happened by week’s end; the glory of the resurrection, Jesus conquering death.

The primary message of this week is not one of pain and suffering, but of hope. Hope that comes from Resurrection after the darkest of all days. This hope helps me through the darkness in my life and gives me strength to walk with each other through this great gift of life on Earth.

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By Fr. Dan Riley, OFM

While I was reading Mike Fenn’s reflections (above) for the Triduum, the three Holy Days – Holy Thursday, Good Friday, through Easter Vigil and Easter Sunday morning – I thought again and again, about how much I admire him, his wife Julie and their children. I am so grateful that they share their life with us at the Mountain and that a number of us have had a chance to see them grow as a family over the years. This year the celebration of the incarnation, the time when we hear the Christmas story and the story of the Holy Family, has been closer now to this Holy Week and these two great Christian Feasts will be again for almost 100 years.

We come so quickly this year from the "stable," "the flight into Egypt," the early days of Jesus' ministry and now intimate lessons of "the upper room," the deep getting-down foot washing love of Jesus for each of us. His example I see in mothers for children, the great concerns that Bona Dads have for their families. Jesus tells us and then shows us as he washes the feet of Peter, that he "came to serve, not be served" - and I am blessed to watch some of you understand this as you reach down and care for your children and lift them up in love ... care for a sometimes dark and cold world.

The "ups and downs" of family life and daily life and the challenges that we all have, including parents with children (and yes, sometimes children with their parents!), shows me the great example that reflects the love of Jesus who suffered so much to show us love, ultimate love. Jesus' own struggle with his Father that we heard on Palm Sunday in the reading of the Passion in Matthew's Gospel is not unlike our own uncertain struggles with parental figures, with our own uncertainties occasionally about God. Jesus' own words, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; ..." suggests an inner dialogue that wants to grow within us all.

It is Christ's struggle for all of us and an invitation for us to enter more deeply into our own struggles with hope.

I have always had a special love for the Easter Vigil, which is to be celebrated when darkness has come over the whole earth and when we long, not only for the light of day, but the light of Christ. The Vigil takes time and takes us through many passages of Scripture which tell us of God's covenant with us. I find myself turning tonight to close these reflections with some words from Isaiah.

Much of our country has been thirsty this year and some of it still is in drought. In other parts of the world hunger is still a great problem, here and elsewhere money is a confusion and at our Easter Vigil this year Isaiah the prophet proclaims, "Thus says the Lord, all you who are thirsty come to the water. You who have no money, come, receive grain and eat; come without paying and without cost, drink wine and milk! Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy. Heed me, and you shall eat well, ..."

Tonight in Devereux Hall a student from another country, one of our Bona athletes, told me he thought he would go back to his native country after graduating here because, "Americans worry too much about spending their money and finding some more."

Bona families and God's "Bona word" invite me not to be preoccupied with "what fails to satisfy," but turn my thirsts to the Living Water and to the Light of Christ that blazes in this Easter Vigil. The love that has bent down to wash our feet and lift up our faces so that we can see each other, love each other and bring peace to our world in these coming days.

Feel free, if you wish, to join into this conversation. You might want to read Isaiah 55: 1-11, any of the other Vigil readings, Romans 6: 3-11 is a wonderful reading that comes just before the Easter Vigil Gospel for this year, Matthew 28: 1-10. There we are told by the Lord after he has risen and speaks to two of the Mary's, "Do not be afraid, go tell my brothers to go to Galilee and there they will see me."

We too will see the Lord when we enter the world with the courage he gives us and the love he has planted in our hearts to serve others.

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(Mt. Irenaeus Web Site)

Lenten Reflection

By Lou McCormick, OFM

Lent has been an intense spiritual experience for followers of Christ throughout the centuries. Our forty days of Lent are modeled after the forty days Jesus spent in the desert immediately after His baptism in the Jordan River. At the end of that time, Jesus was tempted by the devil. Those temptations which Jesus experienced and rejected had to do with POWER, PRESTIGE, AND POSSESSIONS. Anyone the least bit in touch with themselves and events in our world know that these temptations to power, prestige, and possessions are still very operative. I would say that all the problems and pain in our world are because of the desire for power, prestige or possessions.

Following the example of Jesus' words, the traditional practices of Lent are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Notice how all three of these activities focus on God and others. Prayer brings us into God consciousness; fasting brings us into a sense of God's many gifts to us and expresses a desire to give up some of these gifts temporarily for the good of others; and almsgiving is a sharing of some of these gifts with others.

The fundamental Franciscan charism (spirit) has to do with relationship. Francis of Assisi had a profound understanding of God the Father as creator of everyone and everything. If all that exists is created by God, then we are all “brothers” and “sisters” to all that is created.

Relationship is the core of the Christian life because Jesus tells us that love of God and love of neighbor are the core of religion. Jesus came to show us that relationship and how it is to be lived.

The spiritual journey for any of us is the lifelong movement from ego-centered to God-centered living. As we move along this journey, our lives become more and more influenced by the life and teaching of Jesus. Power, prestige, and possessions become less important because others become more important. How I relate to the world becomes more informed by the needs of others, as do my patterns of consumption. We are gradually able to differentiate between “needs” and “wants.” In most cases our needs can be taken care of fairly simply, and in that simplicity, we are better able to share with others.

Through the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving we are able to reflect on our ways of relating to people and things. We may even be moved by God's grace to change some of the ways we do relate so that the needs of another may be met and Jesus' message made more clear.

The Franciscan “thing” is to love the best way we can today, live as simply as possible, and always give thanks and praise to God who loves us and desires us beyond our imagining. The Lenten journey can help us along this path when we enter it with some intentionality.

God loves me so much that He can't take His eyes off me. As I come to understand and believe this, my way of relating to the world changes. My life becomes one of relating in love to the presence of Jesus among us.

Peace and love to all of you.

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(Mt. Irenaeus Web Site)

Christmas Reflection

Season's greetings to you all! We welcome you to take a moment to read this shared reflection from Fr. Dan Riley and Christine Cusick. Christine is a St. Bonaventure grad that has recently become active with the Franciscan Sojourners group. Feel free to share your thoughts after reading through their reflection.

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“Yet in thy dark streets Shineth,
Thy everlasting Light”

As we reflect on the readings from the Midnight Mass for the Nativity of the Lord, we turn to this familiar line of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” This nineteenth century hymn recalls for us the layers of meaning we find in the image of star against sky that we hear in the first reading from Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness / have seen a great light.” This is indeed a season of Light. Even in the season of Advent, the wreath unfolded its light with the turn of each week, and in the circle of the candles, the deep color of the evergreen remained constant in hue and in shape, no beginning, no end: an eternal rhythm.

So many of us have heard this rhythm in the whisper of the pines that embrace the trails of Mt. Irenaeus, and so we know that God gives us the power of His hope on all nights, and on all paths. The richness of this Christmas green is granted meaning in its own contrast against the season’s rich reds: the bow to the wreath, the berry to the bough. These powerful reds remind us of the blood that Christ shed so that His full message would be revealed to us, in His death we would come to more fully realize His light.

“The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.”

“Hopes and fears…” these simple words, in all their meanings that experiences grant us, are held in such contrast to one another, are of such different shades in our ordinary lives, and yet, as this traditional hymn reminds us, they “are met in thee, our Savior, tonight.” Such a tender image of meeting, of convergence, and in Christ’s glory, this beautiful paradox resonates to unite and embody all that we are, all that we yearn to become, through His power and His grace.

“But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.”

When we search for rest in our own lives this Christmas season, we are undoubtedly challenged by the unrest of our world; we are a people in need of Light, in need of peace, in need of meaning. And yet each of these readings reminds us that what Christ brings to us, in all the grandeur of humility, is justice.

We hear in the Psalm: “He shall rule the world with justice / and the peoples with constancy.” We see from the details of that deep dark Christmas night that this is not the justice of human law and nation. It is the justice of Christ, of Love, which came in the stillness of night, warmed by “swaddling clothes,” humbled through God’s power to share our flesh, our fears, our hope, so that through Him we might find peace.

“O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today.”

As we reflect on our shared place of the Mountain, we might recall how the rays of God’s Light pour abundantly through the canopy of the pines. Christ’s Light is indeed with us, not just in the depths of this midnight hour of Christmas, but also in each turn of the day.



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(Mt. Irenaeus Web Site)