Message from Associate Pastor Father Renzo Rosales.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Crucify him! Truly, this is the Son of God! The Lord is risen! These expressions summarize the reactions of different groups of people and individuals when referring to Jesus before, during, and after his passion, death, and resurrection. These are the events that we commemorate this Holy Week with which we begin this month of April.
Through the Gospels that we heard on the Sundays of Lent, we were invited to recognize the human and divine condition of Jesus. That human condition manifested, at the beginning of Lent, in the ways in which Jesus experienced temptation. In the account of the resurrection of Lazarus, on the Sunday before Palm Sunday, we were brought into contact with Jesus as the Lord of Life, the one who has the power to overcome death and offer us a new beginning.
During Holy Week, we continue to evoke Jesus' identification with our humanity as we remember how he too experienced betrayal, ingratitude, rejection, physical suffering, and even death. However, history did not stop there, since, with even more reason, we also evoke and relive the joy of his resurrection with which he reaffirmed to us the message that neither pain nor death have and will not have the last word.
The Church invites us at this time to be sensitive to that same Jesus who identifies with all those who, for various reasons and interests, are today rejected, mistreated and even killed physically or morally by us, as individuals or as a society. This awareness must lead us to act and promote actions that help us not to contribute and rather to put an end to the suffering of others.
Let us ask the Lord and do our part so that, in the midst of this time of division, persecution and conflict inside and outside the country, we do not fall into the temptation of despair. Instead, let us respond to the Lord's call by contributing our best intentions and actions to see in others and project ourselves the sparks of optimism and hope that the Lord has placed in our hearts.
Blessed Holy Week and Happy Easter!
| 
