Fr Robert Hendrickson

Dear Friends,

This weekend many of us have struggled with how to process what we see on the news from New Zealand. We struggle with the news daily really because the daily news is awash in a constant stream of horrors big and small. Really, for most of us, there’s little to be done. We can’t fly to New Zealand and turn back time. Yet while me may not be able to change the past we can change the future.

In some ways that’s the dominant theme of Lent. We cannot change the past but we might be part of a reimagined future. We might be part of creating a culture that values all life because we commit to changing ours. We might be part of creating a more just future because we choose to act justly in our daily lives. We might create a community that treats women, religious and ethnic minorities, or LGBT folks differently all because we choose to treat them differently. Most of all we might be part of creating a more loving world because we choose to follow more closely Jesus’s way of love.

Lent is a time for love. More than Christmas or Easter — Lent is a time when we get to recommit our whole self to being the love we want to see in the world and to setting aside those habits and hardnesses of heart that steer us off of love’s path — off of Jesus’s path. May this Lent be a time for us to freshly walk the way of love and to change the hardest thing of all to change in this hurting world — our own hearts.

Robert