Fr. Stan Fortuna's message on Holy Week

Dear Friends of Francisco,
Greetings peace and Blessings to you and your families and friends. I hope and pray all is well as we move quickly towards Holy Week. Lent is a favorable time as B16 says regarding Lent 2007, “to learn to stay close” to Jesus. Learning to stay close to Jesus will inevitably engage us in the battle of love, which will require the overcoming of betrayal. To experience betrayal, as Brother Webster informs us, means to experience being led astray, to experience the failure and departure of someone in time of need, to experience someone or something proving to be false.

The betrayal of Jesus by Judas is emblematic of humanity’s sin, meaning that it is a sign of the failure of love on the part of all of us at one time or another - in one way or another. These moments when we encounter failures of love, regardless of who it comes from or the shape or expression – or lack there of - it takes, or however hidden and unexpected or unsuspected they may be are connected to the battle of love. The great JPII details this great battle of love and qualifies this battle in the following way: “the hours of the great battle between the love which gives itself without reserve and the mysterium iniquitatis which is imprisoned in hostility (Letter to Priests 200).

The victory of Love, which makes us “more than conquerors” (Romans 8:37) provides space within the confining and restricting encounters with betrayal. This space is a manifestation of the power and freedom of true love rendering us capable to love, to pass through the devastating experience of betrayal – the imprisoned hostility from others which finds a way to escape and attack - regardless of how painful, unexplainable or unsuspected. This is especially true when one has no indication that betrayal is about to strike. Nonetheless, the flames of love are a burning fire, and even the deep waters of betrayal “cannot quench love”. “For stern as death is love, relentless as the nether world is devotion, its flames are a blazing fire” (cf Song of Songs 8:6-7).

May the power of this Blazing Love carry us along and through the remaining time of Lent to Holy Week so that our communion with Love will be forged ever more inseparably with the Love that renders us capable for more love - with Jesus who “having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1). Lord willing, talk to ya’ll next week….peace and Blessings 4 ever in Jesus and Mary….