Pastor's Column 4-14-2024
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April 14, 2024Dear Parishioners,
I do not want to alarm anyone, but this week you will see lots of Pawtucket police cars in our school parking lot. The police department reached out to see if they could use our school building for training. Since this week our students are on vacation, we are able to provide this space for the department to use for their training. So do not worry this week when you see all of the police cars.
Last weekend we celebrated “Divine Mercy Sunday.” What look like rays of light, red and blue, symbolize blood and water: Eucharist and Baptism. This image brings us back to the Cross. The chaplet reminds us that we return to Calvary. As we say: “for the sake of his sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.” The lesson is clear: Divine Mercy comes to us through the Cross, through the water and blood that came from the side of Christ pierced, through the sacraments. This truth needs constant reminding. We may doubt that God can work in and through the cross and suffering. We may be like St. Thomas in the Gospel, thinking God will not save the world through the Cross. In our doubts we place a limit on God’s mercy; we place a limit on how much he loves us. On Divine Mercy Sunday, God breaks our expectations.
How do we receive this Divine Mercy? The Cross is the way to divine mercy. Our Lord speaks a hard but necessary truth; If we want to receive Divine Mercy and the forgiveness of sins, we need to take up our cross and follow Him. Our Lord is serious when he says we must die to self to be saved; the death of our selfishness, our attachments, our lesser loves; so that our Love of God may rise.
Yet as All-Knowing, He knows that sometimes to break us from attachments and sin, he must take those things and persons away from us, which keep us from Him. “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands into Gehenna.” Our crosses are meant to break us from the things or persons we love more than God. To free us from eternal death, God allows us to suffer these little deaths: the loss of employment, the loss of health, and even the loss of a loved one. We might cry out: our God is cruel. He is not; He loves us more than we could possibly understand; and in His love for us, He does not want to lose us. God will do anything to save us; even die for us. God would be unmerciful to leave us in our sins. He would be unmerciful to leave us in states of life, which keep us from loving Him the most.
In the Risen Christ!
Fr. Barrow
