Palm Sunday

image

Dear friends in Christ

We are beginning Holy Week with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  Throughout each of the days of this sacred Week, we shall all accompany Jesus as He fulfils all of the most vital mysteries of our redemption. The Church reminds us each year that we should enter into Holy Week not as mere spectators, or not as though watching some sacred drama: but actively being with Jesus in His agony in the garden, in all the aspects of His suffering and rejection, as He carries his cross to Calvary, as He dies on the cross and as He is buried in the tomb.  Only then can we fittingly rejoice as He rises from the dead on Easter Day.  I hope that we can spend this Holy Week as a time of retreat from the world and from many of our daily preoccupations, so that we can truly enter into the mystery of what it means to be redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. The Easter Vigil is the very high point of the year. It is the Christian Passover of the Lamb of God, Who passes from this life to eternal life.  During the Easter vigil  a large number of adults will be Received into Full Communion with the Church through the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Communion. Please pray for them in these final days of their preparation that they may be filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit to make them strong and faithful Catholics. May God give us all the grace during this Week, to bring to fulfilment, all that we have been striving for throughout this Lent.

fr Kevin Hale