Letter from the Pastor
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April 3, 2025Today is the Fifth Sunday of Lent; previously called "Passion Sunday." Today marks the beginning of Passiontide, a deeper time of Lent. This is when the Church shifts her focus from Christ in the desert (the Gospel for the First Sunday of Lent) to Christ during His Passion. It is the final Sunday of Lent before the beginning of Holy Week. Next Sunday April 13th is Palm Sunday. Hang in there with your Lenten practices!
Last Sunday was known as Laetare Sunday because of the first word of the entrance antiphon; today is known as "Judica" Sunday for the same reason. Judica means justice, “Justice, grant to me O God...”
This Sunday is also when all the statues and crucifix are covered in a dark shade of purple. We begin the “fasting of our eyes.” In Germany, today was known as “Black Sunday” due to the custom of veiling crucifixes and statues in black material, elsewhere, generally purple, some countries covered them in white.
The practice of veiling images alerts us that something is different, a longing for Easter Sunday. Through this absence of images, our senses are heightened and we become more aware of what is missing.
The Gospel reading for Passion Sunday always was taken from St. John’s Gospel, telling the story of how Jesus "hid" Himself from the Hebrews when they attempted to stone him (John 8:59). According to
St. Augustine, at this moment when Jesus hid Himself from the angry crowd, Christ in fact became invisible to them by virtue of His Divine nature. To help signify this mystery, holy images in church were veiled the evening before Passion Sunday. This includes images of the saints, as it is “befitting that if the glory of the Master is hidden, then His servants should also not appear”.
The origin of this practice probably derives from a custom in Germany from the ninth century. A large cloth, called the "Hungertuch" (hunger cloth), hid the altar entirely from the faithful during Lent and was not removed until during the reading of the Passion on Holy Wednesday at the words "the veil of the temple was rent in two."
Some scholars say there was a practical reason for this practice, the often-illiterate people needed a way to know it was Lent. Others think that it was a remnant of the ancient practice of public penance in which the penitents were ritually expelled from the church at the beginning of Lent.
After the ritual of public penance fell into disuse — now the entire congregation symbolically entered the order of penitents by receiving ashes on Ash Wednesday — it was no longer possible to expel all from the church. Rather, the altar or "Holy of Holies" was shielded from view until they were reconciled to God at Easter.
Gladly, more churches have returned to this ancient custom. It helps us in our Lenten prayer. We should long for “seeing” Christ, with all the veils removed.
As we enter the last two weeks of Lent, let us renew our commitment to our Lenten practices, or if you haven’t started, now is the time. We start preparing ourselves for Holy Week.