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Third Sunday of Lent
19 March 2006
Dear Friends in Christ,
Lent is a privileged time for conversion, and this is true for all Catholics: those baptized as infants, those received as adults, those who drifted away and have returned to the Church. In each and all of us the voice of Jesus is speaking, "The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel" (Mk 1:15). Such conversion is the radical reorientation of one’s life, and it is an essential part of following the Lord Jesus – of becoming, of being, and of remaining a disciple of Christ.
For those coming into full communion with the Church, the culmination of this process is the Vigil of Easter, called by St. Augustine the ’Mother of all Vigils’. During the night before Easter Sunday, the whole Plan of Salvation is unfolded from the lighting of the New Fire through the Old Testament Lessons to the proclamation of the Gospel of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. In the midst of this glory, the Sacrament of Baptism is celebrated for the first time since Ash Wednesday, and many who were already baptized into Christ but outside of the visible communion of the Church will be received as our brethren by their profession of faith. The Vigil of Easter is the heart of the liturgical year, and I invite all to share in this extraordinary moment of prayer and praise on Saturday 15 April.
At St. Mary’s during the Easter Vigil in each of the past four years, we have baptized or received into full communion with the Church between 40 and 50 adults, and this year is no exception. Our Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults began last fall with over 60 people, and we anticipate that just a few less than 50 will complete that process in three weeks. What’s happening here is but part of a large (and largely unknown) development in the life of the Church in the United States: each year in our nation more than 200,000 adults are baptized or become Catholics in fulfillment of their prior Baptism in another Christian communion. At a time when it is all too easy to imagine that the Church is exhausted from scandal and mediocrity, we find that the LORD renews His mercies each day in the most unexpected of ways.
The pilgrimage of faith taken by those who will join us at the altar for the first time during the Vigil of Easter reminds us that no one is born a Christian, we are only born again as Christians. Living in full communion with the Lord Jesus and His Church comes from believing His Gospel, behaving according to His teaching, and belonging to Him and to each other by living by grace through faith in the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Father Newman