Holy Week Reflections - Palm Sunday

It is Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy week. That has me reflecting back on my goals for Lent and my article on 'Lenten Preparation'. It has been a very different Lent than I expected. I did not actually finish any of the books I had hoped to read. I did get a fair bit of reading done while on retreat but I focused on books from the retreat house's library that I do not own, rather than what I took with me.

I know that Lent is just the beginning of the Easter season and that there are the weeks of Eastertide ahead of us in the liturgical year. The six weeks following Easter are also part of this season. Yet my failures to stick to my commitments through Lent have cast a shadow on the celebrations and the sorrows we commemorate this week.

I did not pray the way of the cross or the Stations of the Cross each day. I did not read all the books I wanted to read. I have not even done that well on my new year's resolutions. But Easter is also a time of renewal, a time of hope, and a time of joy. So I need to let go, and move forward. I need to embrace the Easter season and its true meaning and start over again.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:6 "I am come that you might have life and have it more abundantly." Embracing the Easter message is the beginning of the abundant life!
Those are my reflections on Lenten goals and their outcomes as we approach the sorrows and celebrations of Holy Week and Easter.

Peace and Strength!
Yours, learning to be
Steven R. McEvoy

"The only reason for being a professional writer is that you can't help it."
- Leo Rosten

"Among all the aims of our lives, there is only one which is truly necessary: it is to reach the goal which God has set for us; to attain to heaven, by living our own individual vocation to the full. In order to achieve this we have to be ready to lose everything else, to clear away anything which would obstruct our way. Everything must be a means for reaching God, and if anything whatever proves not to be a means but an obstacle, then we must put it right or give it up in sacrifice."
-Francis Fernandez
-In Conversation With God Vol #1 p.121

(Photo Courtesy Gerald Augustinus with permission from the blog The Cafeteria is Closed!)