FRIDAY OF
THE THIRD WEEK OF EASTER!
It is good to review our practice of Penance.
The following is taken from the Ordo published by the Canadian Catholic Bishops. It is the Liturgical Calendar with Guidelines for Liturgy.
NOTE 29
PENITENTIAL DISCIPLINE
- Law of the Gospel: The Church wants emphasis to be given to the evangelical law that a follower of Christ must do penance. While the heart of penance is hatred for sin as an offence against God (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy ,no. 109b), external forms of penance are required to deepen and encourage the internal virtue.
See National Bulletin on Liturgy - 42, Call to Penance.
- Fridays are days of abstinence from meat*, but Catholics may substitute special acts of charity or piety on this day.
- Lent has a penitential character. During Lent, penance is an important requirement of Christian life. Fulfillment of this duty involves prayer, works of piety and charity, and self-denial by fulfilling one’s obligations more faithfully and especially by observing the prescribed fast and abstinence.
- Ash Wednesday and Good Friday in the Roman Rite, including Canada, are days of fasting* and of abstinence from meat**. Pastors should invite and encourage their people to do special penance on these two days.
- The Paschal Fast* is observed on Good Friday and, where possible, continued through Holy Saturday.
- Privileged forms of Penance are recommended, especially during Lent. These forms are privileged because they are based on the teaching of the Gospels (fasting, almsgiving, prayer, works of mercy) or because of their traditional value among the people of God (abstinence from meat).
* Christian fasting obtains its full meaning when we deprive ourselves of food in order to be more open to prayer, to share more in the suffering of those who are starving and to save money to give to the poor. Fasting is a penitential discipline intended to open our hearts to God and others, a means of purification and spiritual liberation, a witness of the depth of our faith.
** The law of “abstinence from meat” binds those who are 14 and older; the law of “fasting” binds those from 18 to 59 years of age. Parents and educators are reminded of their duty to introduce children gradually to the understanding and practice of penance. The actions modeled by adults will be the greatest influence in this matter.
Pastoral Responsibility: Parish committees should assist the Pastor to help make Christian penance a reality in the life of their community.
Y
Family Picnic
This Sunday after the 10:30 am Mass
PLEASE JOIN US!
y
The Following is the
Program of Prayer & Study for
Friday, April 19th, 2024
Daily Mass Readings: cccb.ca
From a sermon by
Saint Ephrem, deacon
(c. 306 - 373 A.D.)
The cross of Christ gives life to the human race
Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying his cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross he summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it.
Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man.
Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strongroom and scattered all its treasure.
At length he came upon Eve, the mother of all the living. She was that vineyard whose enclosure her own hands had enabled death to violate, so that she could taste its fruit; thus the mother of all the living became the source of death for every living creature. But in her stead Mary grew up, a new vine in place of the old. Christ, the new life, dwelt within her. When death, with its customary impudence, came foraging for her mortal fruit, it encountered its own destruction in the hidden life that fruit contained. All unsuspecting, it swallowed him up, and in so doing released life itself and set free a multitude of men.
He who was also the carpenter’s glorious son set up his cross above death’s all-consuming jaws, and led the human race into the dwelling place of life. Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life. Bitter was the branch that had once been grafted upon that ancient tree, but sweet the young shoot that has now been grafted in, the shoot in which we are meant to recognize the Lord whom no creature can resist.
We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead.
Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered his cross in sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all.