Week of March 27, 2022

Fr. Aidan Writes:

Some pieces for reflection:

Fourth Sunday of Lent

I saw a strange today. I put food for him in the eating-place, and drink in the drinking-

place, and music in the listening-place. In the Holy Name of the Trinity He blessed my- self and my house, my goods and my family.

And the lark said in her warble, often, often, often goes Christ in the stranger’s guise. O, oft and oft and oft, goes Christ in the stranger’s guise.

Irish Rune

Why should we Christians feel joyful today? In the first place, this Sunday is a festival of spring. At least it was so in the early church. In the olden times the first roses were brought to church for a blessing on this Sunday. (In Mediterranean lands spring comes much earlier.) Christians of former times lived much closer to nature than we do. When after the cold of winter spring comes to our land like a smiling youth, when in the fields God begins the miracle of multiplying bread, when God spreads a great table from which all creatures, the lowest to the highest, can eat their fill, when God lifts the white pall of winter from the earth and restores life in abundance to plants and ani- mals——then Christians have cause to experience heartfelt joy, for they have a presentiment that Paradise is not far away.

Pius Parsch