Let
us pray
CS&T offers new guide to Catholic spirituality
How fitting that the Church should celebrate the resurrection of Jesus
this year only days after the start of spring. Buds are now growing on
plants. They promise that as spring progresses, new flowers will transform
the landscape. Spring stands as a spiritual lesson: No matter the bleakness
of the winter, we hope in the unseen promise of beauty to come. We people
of the resurrection live in hope when it is dark, and find our reward
in joy when it is light.
Now is the time of light. The Easter season moves our focus beyond the
one day of Easter Sunday. Gone are pleasant add-ons like caricature bunny
rabbits, chocolates, flowers and ham dinners. Now we not only face the
resurrection, we live it for 50 days. We enter into a new springtime of
grace.
If we are going to grow from bud to flower, we must seize this new chance
of the season to live a holier life. Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ,
we have become spiritual sons and daughters of God the Father. At Easter,
the Church invites us to recommit ourselves to living better, more forgiving,
more generous lives marked by deeper love for God our Father and His people
in the Body of His Son, the Church.
This new springtime invites us to discover the richness of prayer in the
Catholic tradition. To help readers of this newspaper make use of the
spiritual heritage we possess as Catholics, we present a few changes this
week. On page 21, following our usual coverage of local Catholic news,
we offer a page devoted to Catholic spirituality. It condenses the former
Mass in Focus page by offering an index of the Sunday Mass readings, rather
than reprinting them in entirety. The commentary on the Sunday liturgy
by one of our gifted priest homilists (or, on the rare fifth Sunday of
the month such as this Sunday, from Catholic News Service columnists)
remains.
Leading the page is a column by Michelle Francl-Donnay, a lay woman in
the Archdiocese who offers a simple guide to Catholic spirituality in
a practical manner. Choosing a short passage from Sacred Scripture, she
writes a brief reflection from a lived experience, then ends with a prayer
from the liturgy of the Church. The orthodox, everyday presentation is
meant to aid readers as they deepen their love for Jesus and His people.
By grace, may your prayer life blossom into a deeper holiness of life
for your benefit and for the world.