Dear Fellow Parishioners,

By the time you read this, we will all have passed with our Lord through his passion and death, to his resurrection. It is the most spiritually intense three days of the entire year – not only because of the events themselves, but also because the pattern of the death and resurrection of Jesus is experienced many times over throughout the course of our own lives.

During these days, there is a tendency to focus on Jesus’ physical pain manifested in the brutality with which he died. That is an important aspect of the Passion, but we must also make a distinction between physical pain and spiritual suffering. For example, Mary did not carry a cross or suffer condemnation, but her suffering was great.

Modern medicine can do a lot to reduce physical pain. As modern people, we practically demand that medical treatment, to the extent possible, be pain-free and even done under anesthesia. Not so in Jesus’s time. In those days, people accepted levels of physical pain that we would find unthinkable. Surgery and childbirth took place without modern pain relief and was to do so for many more centuries to come. I suspect that the aspect of the Passion that spoke most strongly to people in those days was spiritual suffering – the scandal of being betrayed, abandoned, humiliated. The pain of loss. There can be no greater spiritual desolation than to feel abandoned by God. That is spiritual death, worse than any other kind of death. The Gospels and the Holy Week liturgies look at those realities directly in the face without flinching. The Triduum is the shortest season by design, as we cannot look at the Passion events any longer than we can stare at a solar eclipse.

That is a big part of the strange attractiveness of the Catholic faith. Unlike modern self-help or the “prosperity gospel.” It doesn’t promise freedom from pain or suffering, but gives them a context and meaning – which cannot be found elsewhere.

I mention this now because the Church in many areas of the U.S., is experiencing a significant increase in numbers of people who want to look into, and to convert to, the Catholic faith. This past week, the New York Times featured an article, “Roman Catholic Churches See A Surge Of New Converts.” Parishes and dioceses across the country are seeing this, most notably among those 18-35 years old. (This phenomenon seems to be happening mainly in the Catholic and Orthodox churches.) The reasons given vary and seem to be highly personal – including the sense of isolation and internal void that cannot be filled, to wanting to have faith to pass down to their children, to needing basic guidance on how to live. There are currently two highly influential factors that didn’t exist when I was ordained: Catholic media and podcasts, and the Catholic Catechism.

I wanted to end this Pastor’s Desk on a very positive note – after all, it’s Easter!

Blessings, Fr. Bill Donahue