End of Lent Thoughts and Meditations

Here are three meditations to end your Lent with.

They are all from the book, Daily Reflections for Lent: Not by Bread Alone 2026 by Mark A. Villano, CSP

St. Kateri Tekakwitha

I didn’t start out writing a book about St. Kateri. I’d never heard of her before a chance encounter with a random church in 2012, but that is an entire other story and a lifetime away, or at least that’s how it seems. As

I’ve written about before, I was drawn to her at the time very near to her canonization, and when I went through the conversion process, RCIA at the time, she was on my short list for confirmation saints. I went in another direction, partly for my attachment to Wales and partly because I still held onto the fear of appropriation. That might have been that, but in my discernment of joining the Catholic faith, I visited the shrine of the North American Martyrs and discovered holiness there. I found out that this palisade was the footprint of the original Mohawk village, Ossernenon where Kateri was born. She was born about ten years after the Jesuits martyrdom, but it never really resonated with me as her place. Over time, I discovered the Fonda shrine where Kateri had grown up. I visited the museum, the archaeological site, had a picnic there with the Cursillo group, a Catholic organization, and gradually began to read about her life. Her life in Fonda, her ‘escape’ to Quebec, the reception of her sacraments as a young adult, and her death at a very young age.

I’ve written about a lot of this, and some of it will feature in my book, but through it I learned more and more, and thought I’d visit her shrine in Canada to complete my journey with and alongside Kateri.

I’ve spent many meaningful hours at the shrine in Fonda, New York and the people there have been gracious and generous with their time and resources as I continue my research and writing. I feel a part of their community, and the first time I received an unexpected hug it came with a large smile welcoming me back. I felt it deep inside. I am drawn there more and more, each visit a gift. Learning about Kateri through different sources is also a gift.

She was born in 1656, parents died in 1659; she was baptized in 1676, received her first communion in 1677, and died in 1680. In 1980 she was beatified, and in 2012 canonized.

I give you the litany of her statistics to remind when big things happened in her life in order to inform that this year is a big deal anniversary. One member of the community did some math and as I said, Kateri was baptized in 1676. This was an Easter Sunday, and the date was April 5th. Because of that uncovering, it was realized that this year Easter Sunday also falls on April 5th! It is exactly to the day, and the Easter celebration that St. Kateri was baptized three hundred fifty years ago.

To commemorate this event, once in a lifetime I dare say, the Kateri Shrine in Fonda, NY requested ad received permission from the bishop of the Albany Diocese where the shrine resides to hold an Easter Mass on that auspicious day. The Shrine typically doesn’t open it’s buildings until May 1st when the weather is warmer as the public buildings have no heat, so this is a special day in so many ways.

The presider will be Fr. Michael Heine, OFM Conv., the Minister Provincial of the Conventual Franciscan Friars. They are the custodians of the shrine since its founding in 1938 by Conventual Franciscan Friar, Fr. Thomas Grassman.

It is a day or so away as I write this, but I am beyond excited to be going to the mass and to be part of this extraordinary event commemorating her baptism and we renew our own baptismal vows.

Information on attending this mass or any other events at the shrine can be found on their website: Saint Kateri Tekakwitha National Shrine & Historic Site

An Easter Vigil, Ten Years

Easter falls so weirdly on the calendar. Often it is the same week as Passover, which makes sense because Jesus went to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival during what is now Holy Week. But this year, Easter is this Sunday (March 31), and Passover doesn’t begin until nearly a month later, at sundown on April 22. Adding into that is that this is my ten-year anniversary of coming into full communion with the Catholic Church. A decade. So long and so short simultaneously showing truly how the days are long, but the years short.

My Easter Vigil was on April 19, 2014. I’ll celebrate that day as well, attending church, having mass said for special people in my life, and I’ll also be celebrating this week as we welcome new people into the church and our parish. There are two baptisms which I find fraught with emotion. Being able to watch what I went through is both nostalgic and spiritual. I still remember the water being poured over my head, slowly, three times, as the words penetrated my being. I still talk about how my priest used a water pitcher, a small one, but still a pitcher and how in subsequent years it was more like a clam shell. It’s amusing to me until I think about the amount of icy water dripping down my robe, although I guess flowing might be a more apt word. I kneeled in a tub, a literal baby-sized plastic pool while subsequent catechumens were stood over a basin. It is a beautiful, ceramic basin, and I am in part jealous and also awed by watching my own experience play out for others, regardless of the intricacies and the details. My robes were made by my friend. The incense rising on Holy Thursday made the shape of a Jewish star. I pointed it out to my godmother, so I know I didn’t imagine it. The chrism oil from the confirmation smelled of rosemary. I leaned over to my husband and friend and told them to smell my face. It was a pleasant, old-world, feeling of ancestors, and something I’ve only felt a few times, three times during my children’s brises and namings, and on my pilgrimage to Wales and Auriesville. It was doing something as part of something bigger, huge, that often can’t be put into words or even thoughts. It’s not that it’s old, but it’s, as Tevye says in Fiddler on the Roof, “tradition,” where tradition means so much more than the dictionary definition. It’s deeper than the ocean and vaster than the stars. It’s time stood still and it’s time speeding past. A single line or a wibbly-wobbly mush of threads or yarn tightening in some places, loose in others, knotted, and dangling and frayed and worn and strong and sturdy. It is faith, and it is questioning. It is changing and encouragement. It is friendship and relationship and knowing everything and still nothing.

Ten years of prayer, of mass, of rosaries, of devotions, novenas, saints and blessed, seeing beyond and within. When we renew our baptismal vows on Saturday night, I will close my eyes and let the water land where it wills, the cleansing water of G-d, that reminds of the past and prepares for the future.

Final Lenten Labyrinth

Lent did not seem to rush by or to trickle; it went along just right as Goldilocks would say. For me, I think part of it was keeping the labyrinth journal throughout Lent. It forced me (in a good way) to look at my day, both before it began and then to examine how it went later on and keep track of my activities. I mostly stuck to spiritual activities, but some secular ones seeped in, especially when I spent quality time with my family or if I completed writing assignments. Those things got me up in such a positive way, I couldn’t help but meditate on them and incorporate them into my spiritual journey for Lent. I enjoyed switching the colors between journaling, and I enjoyed recognizing close moments with G-d in the micro-narration as well as in the moment.

With Lent finished, and other responsibilities beginning, I thought I would try my hand at a spiritual journal. I started it on the 19th and didn’t pick it up again until yesterday. So far not an auspicious start, but I don’t intend it to be a daily journal; I’m attempting to keep it pressure free. It occured to me to begin it when I started keeping a log for my Cursillo grouping and Ultreya tripod and close moments. I thought I should keep those and have access to re-reading them and be able to always be advancing in my spiritual life.

Here are the final pictures of my Lenten Labyrinth Journal. It is definitely something that I found rewarding and something I would consider doing again. As you can see below the cut, I needed a second labyrinth to cover everything during Holy Week, concluding with Easter.

Inspire. April.

“To many people holidays are not voyages of discovery, but a ritual of reassurance.”
Phillip Andrew Adams

This week marks my massaversary. Two years before I received my sacraments, I began attending church services. It was during Holy Week that this started and it marked a profound change in my life. Attending mass, sitting alone in a pew reading Scripture didn’t make all my problems go away; they didn’t suddenly create a magical turnaround in my mental health issues, my personal issues, my crisis, but it did create light in the darkness, both metaphorically and literally in a bright light vision. I met new people who influenced me in all the positive ways you want friends to influence you. I discovered a group of people who were glad to know me, and provided material help despite not knowing me from Adam. I saw what a calling was through their actions, and I saw what it means to walk with Christ.

I was welcomed with great joy, and I continue to be.

My massaversary is more than simply a date on a calendar or a memory of long ago. It is present, it is here, it is now, and I am welcomed with great joy whenever I enter the church and cross my self with the holy water from the font in the gathering space.

Even in an empty building, I am welcomed because Christ is always present.

I will try to put words on my feelings in small ways as the week continues on, and as the Lenten Journey ends and Easter begins.

The Easter Fire

I didn’t know what to expect at my first Easter fire. It was nine years ago, and I still remember it as if it was this morning. I had decided on Tuesday of Holy Week to attend my first mass (thank you Tim for suggesting it), and then my second mass on Wednesday. I thought I was just getting into the groove of daily mass when I turned up on Thursday to what was a prayer service and not a mass. Holy Thursday Mass was at night. The same occurred Friday and Saturday mornings.

But Saturday morning was different. When I arrived there were already several people outside preparing the firewood, the kindling and the tall stone brazier for the lighting of the Easter fire. I didn’t know at the time that the fire is lit in the morning after the prayer service and tended to for the rest of the day by parishioners. This is done regardless to weather and I’ve seen some years in the rain, in the cold, in the wind; sometimes all three simultaneously.

At sundown, after burning all day, the fire is used to light the Paschal candle (this candle represents the light of Christ coming into the world), which is then carried into the church and is used to light all of the individual handheld tapered candles inside the church for the Easter Vigil. As an aside, the entire church is in darkness and as the candles are lit and the people in the pews are illuminated, it is a magnificent visual as well as spiritual to have the darkness overcome in the manifestation of the engulfing light, filling the entire church with the warm glow of hundreds of candles and the quiet singing (three times during the procession) of the light of Christ with the congregation responding, thanks be to G-d. After that, the Exsultet (the Easter Proclamation) is read or rather chanted.

Before any of that happens though, hours before, the priest lights the Easter fire in the presence of parishioners.

I was a few people back from the stone container that first year. I couldn’t see very well. I was wrapped up in a large scarf, trying to brace myself against the wind. It wasn’t strong enough to push anyone over, but it was just enough to be annoying to the priest and his assistants who were attempting to light the fire. It was also very, very cold. I still wasn’t sure if I belonged here.

I knew the moment the fire was lit. I felt something touch me inside. I couldn’t see it, and it was a split second or more before the exclamation of the crowd in the front let the rest of us all know it was lit. I heard the flint and stone, that sharp scraping that has to be done in just such a way to spark, and it took more than once or twice.

When the spark caught the paper and dry sticks I heard a whoosh sound, but it hadn’t come from the fire, and I felt that whoosh inside me. I was startled by it, I was chilled, and not by the cold. Something in me had changed or pulled me one metaphorical step forward. It wasn’t this moment that drew me to conversion, but this moment stands out as one of those unexplainable, miraculous openings to a wellspring of new emotions. Tears came involuntarily to my eyes.

It was deeply moving and as everyone moved back inside to the gathering space sharing coffee, bagels, and donuts, I was lost in my thoughts wondering what I had witnessed, what I was feeling emotionally, savoring the continuing shiver in my soul.

My Easter Bag

It’s hard to believe that Easter was only one week ago. Most of my Holy Week was spent in church between morning prayer services, the parish community dinner, evening prayer and mass. There is a lot going on and a lot packed into the second half of the week following Palm Sunday. The three days of Holy Week prior to Easter Sunday is called the Triduum, which is basically one long service beginning on Holy Thursday with the sign of the Cross and ending at the Easter Vigil on Saturday night the same way. At our parish we have hospitality or receptions on Saturday morning and evening, the former in celebration of the lighting the Easter fire and the latter in celebration of welcoming the new members to the Catholic church through the RCIA program.

It’s very fulfilling and spiritual, but it’s long and it’s tiring. Since my first Vigil, one of my yearly customs is that I will bring a small tote bag along with my usual purse to carry a water, cough drops, tissues. I’ll add my worship booklet so I have it for the entire three days.

At some point during Holy Week, I’ll realize that I don’t really need my pocketbook if I toss my wallet and kindle and phone and other necessities into the tote bag. That way I only have one bag to carry and keep track of.

Genius, right?

Well, every year, I’m surprised by the time Saturday afternoon rolls around at how heavy this tote bag is. I don’t realize it’s getting heavier as I add things one at a time until the very end when I go to grab it out of the car, and it pulls me back in.

Here is a picture of it when I arrived at church for the lighting of the Easter fire on Saturday morning:

It has my large wallet, kindle, hearing aids, extra batteries for the hearing aids, clipboard and pad if the urge to write grabs hold of me, a pen, packet of tissues, bag of cough drops, daily reflection book for Lent, cell phone, rosary, Triduum worship aid, any of the other worship aids that I’ve collected during the week, bottle of cold water, umbrella for the upcoming rain (it wasn’t raining when I arrived but it was raining very hard when we all went outside to light the fire). I think there may have been a few other odds and ends in there. All I know is it was really heavy by the time I pulled it out of the back seat.
Admittedly, and embarrassingly, this one week later, it still has stuff in it, and needs to be completely emptied and put away. It doesn’t have much, but still, it’s long past time.

Easter Out!

Since my mother-in-law passed away, except for Thanksgiving which we spend with my sister-in-law’s family, we spend every holiday at home. We eventually get the dining room table cleaned off. We add a pretty table runner. No one drinks out of a can. Phones get confiscated, kind of. Each meal has its own traditions: Rosh Hashanah is roast chicken, challah bread, yams, apples. Halloween is pizza. Christmas is roast beef, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, caramelized onions, peas & carrots, dinner rolls, one year we had Yorkshire pudding. New Year’s are appetizers as is the Super Bowl. St. Patrick’s Day is corned beef and cabbage, mashed potatoes and carrots and of course, Irish soda bread. Passover is chicken, potato pancakes, carrots, matzo ball soup, matzo and butter, sometimes gefilte fish and/or chopped liver. Easter is roast turkey or chicken, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, carrots, and dinner rolls. We seem to eat a lot of carrots, don’t we?

Our oven hasn’t worked consistently for over six months. We got very lucky for Christmas that it did indeed work and we were able to eek out a delicious Christmas dinner as well as our yearly birthday cheesecake for my son. A few weeks ago we tried to bake cornbread as a side dish to something that I can’t quite remember. After the apportioned hour, it was still gooey. The oven, which had been set for 350 was only about 200 degrees warm, which was not enough to cook it. I scoured Facebook for directions on how long to microwave the cornbread and dinner was saved, but not before realizing we were going to have a problem.

From then on, we have been using our crock pot. Lasagna, meatloaf, roast (not quite roast but fully cooked and tasty) chicken. I intend to try bread in it, but I don’t have the energy quite yet, and either way, it’s Passover for the rest of the week.

On the Monday after Palm Sunday, I told my husband that it was decision time, so what would it be – fix the oven before Good Friday or eat out on Easter? He would fix the oven. He did his research online, found the part he thought was the problem, and went to order it. He thought it was twelve dollars; it turned out it was fifty. We already know we’re going to need to replace this oven in the near future. We’re waiting on a tax refund to see if it’s doable or if we need to go another year on crock pot/stove top meals (which have been working out okay to be honest, if a little more time consuming). We decided to eat out.

My oldest son would come home in the early morning from work before he went to sleep and then back to his next shift for our annual Easter egg hunt. I know they’re old, but they all play along and they get some candy, and I get some pictures and everyone has a fun time and some sugar high donuts and hot chocolate for breakfast. Then we’d nap and have dinner much later.

It felt weird from the moment we decided it. Would any place even be open? I know that Dunkin’ Donuts is open, and several places do a we’ll make the meal, you heat it, but we ignored the situation for a day or so more.Then I got two emails – Applebee’s was open as was Texas Roadhouse for Easter dinner. Hmm…not exactly what we were looking for, but who knows?

We finally settled on Cracker Barrel. We thought that would be the closest to eating at home. We’d allow everyone to get dessert if they liked to make it a little more special than a regular dinner out. I even got a salad. I also mandated no phones at the table. That worked for the most part. Not perfect, but what dinner ever is?

It was a lovely change of pace. I enjoyed it, and I’d consider doing it again, but I don’t know that I’d want to make it a tradition, but it worked out for everyone, and I was actually surprised how busy they were. I thought brunch time wold be busy, but we were there just before traditional dinner time, at around four in the afternoon, and it was busy. No one was waiting but it was crowded and the waitresses were constantly on the move. On our drive there, I was alos surprised at how many other restaurants were open and their parking lots relatively full: Friendly’s, TGIFriday’s, Panera Bread. Starbucks drive-theough was still buzzing, although the supermarket was closed and its parking lot was empty.

All in all, a grateful Easter celebration with most of the family.

It was actually kind of relaxing.

Happy Easter!

Tragedy

We were at a work event for my son’s job this afternoon when I found out that the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris was on fire. Just the view on the computer screen with the white smoke, the bright orange flames licking the stones and rising higher and higher was speech stopping; it was mind-numbing to me. I have a sensitivity to viewing buildings burning. I think it brings me to 9/11, it brings me to California wildfire devastation, and with television and social media it brings it literally into our fingertips.

As of this writing, I believe the two towers have been saved even though the spire collapsed. One of the rose stained glass windows was destroyed, but three remained. The statues that had been on the spire were removed four days ago as part of the renovation. The art, artifacts, and holy relics were saved after being removed during the fire. These are all good things.

This church is nearly one thousand years old. The person who laid the first stone was not alive at its completion. As it has been before, it will be rebuilt because like the church of people remains in perpetuity, the building will be repaired, rebuilt, and it won’t be the last time. The idea, the ideal of the church family lives on in the people who will return to Notre Dame.

In the meantime, we can mourn the physical building as we mourn the death of a loved one and know it will rise again.

I have never been to Notre Dame in Paris, France, but my son visited while on a school trip in his senior year in high school. Knowing how close I am to my own local church and my Catholic devotion brought this home for my souvenir from his visit, ironically also during Holy Week. It sits on my bookshelf where I look at it every now and then, and after seeing the cathedral burning, upon coming home I took this pewter replica in my hand and turned it over, touching the carvings, pressing on the spire, tracing the cuneiform. It was sad and comforting at the same time. (c)2019

Sundays in Easter – Pentecost

Readings

Acts 2:1-11
Ps 104
1 Cor 12:3b-7, 12-13
John 20:19-23

Reflection

“To each individual the manifestation of the spirit is given for some benefit.”

Just as Jesus showed himself to the apostles and sent them on their mission work as his Father sent him, we also have the holy spirit within us as a guiding hand, showing us which path is the one that is best for each of us.

Journal Prompt
Write about when you’ve felt the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Prayer

Today is the day, Holy Spirit.
You come upon us and leave a breath on each of us.
Your give your spirit to be a part of us,
as a third to join with the Father and the Son.
A guiding hand
To support,
To encourage,
To console,
There when needed,
Received with gratitude.
Amen.

Griffins and Ginger Snaps

-I write, and I have a blog because of course I do-

easter