5th Week of Lent

by Rev. Vijaya Yemparala  |  03/17/2024  |  From the Clergy

Every day of this Lenten season we prepare ourselves to renew our baptismal promises, together with the whole Church, during the Easter vigil service on Holy Saturday night. The Holy week of the Lenten season culminates in the renewal of our baptismal vows during the Easter Vigil or on Easter Day. Through our enlightened and more committed renewal of our baptismal vows we receive an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

And the Holy Spirit helps us to participate in the life of Christ through our sacramental holy communion of Christ’s ‘body given up for us’ and ‘blood poured out for us’. Thereby we shall progress in our journey of present life with the Eternal Father in Christ and in the Holy Spirit. We, as God’s children, succeed in a definitive and glorious manner at the consummation of our present earthly ongoing warfare with the Devil. Evil is at work in the world and working against our ongoing obedience of faith in the Holy Spirit to the Eternal Father. For ‘The flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh.’

Lent is not an end in itself! It is a means to the above mentioned glorious end of our post baptismal life in Christ and in the Holy Spirit in God’s one holy Catholic Church. ‘If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor.15:19)’.

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Cor.15:58).