From Archbishop Donoghue

Mass at St. John Neumann Regional School
April 3, 1998
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Dear Boys and Girls,

Well, I know that you are about to start your Spring Break - I always enjoy a vacation - and I remember that when I was in school, this was the best vacation time during the whole year.

Christmas vacation, of course, was great - all the presents and decorations and good food and stuff - but it was never long enough, and the weather might be terrible as well.

But Spring Break, first of all, was close to the end of the school year, and so it made you think about the summer, when you would be off for three whole months, and how great it would be.

And then, the weather, most years during Spring Break, was really fine - warm, not hot, enough rain to make all the flowers and trees bud and bloom, just like they are today - and with the good weather, you could be outside, playing, going places, visiting family and friends.

But another special thing about Spring Break when I was a boy, and it's still a special thing today - is what these days mean to people who believe in Jesus Christ - people who want to live the kind of life that He taught people to live.

You know, for the first thirty years or so that He lived, Jesus was really just like you, and when He was a little older, He was probably very much like your father, or maybe your uncle - first, as a youngster, He would have had His studies - all Jewish children learned about the Scriptures, the Bible, and about the laws of their people - and Jesus would have had His chores to do too - remember that Joseph, his foster-father was a carpenter, and I would bet that Jesus was always helping out in the shop.

And when He became a young man, He began to do the things that you will soon be doing - making plans about what He would do professionally - thinking about how to take care of His Mother and Foster-father as they got older - and perhaps, wondering about His vocation, about the call from God, and how it would work out - the call that comes to each of us as well, and says to us - you will be a father, you will be mother, you will be a priest or a sister - you will be a doctor and save lives or a lawyer and protect people's rights - whatever it might be - that special call that comes to each of us, and even though He was God, because He was like us in all things but sin, the call that came to Jesus as well, as he approached his thirtieth birthday.

Every person's life is a story worth telling - a story worth remembering - a story worth sharing with someone else. But the life of Jesus is the story that all of us need to follow, to learn, to think about - and then we need to let it change us into someone better than we are now. And that is the most special thing about Holy Week, which is what we call next week, the week leading up to Easter. May be you will go to all the services that will be held next week, and maybe just one or two. But all next week, we will be remembering the very special events that happened to Jesus in the last days that He lived on earth- and we will be remembering all the truly kind and wonderful things He did at that time, when He made and left to us, the greatest things that we have - the Word of God, which teaches us right from wrong - the Catholic Church, that guards us and helps us out on the road of life - the sacraments that we come to the Church to receive, which bring us together, and give us the strength to help ourselves and to help all those people we love or who we feel sorry for.

All of these things were a part of God's call to Jesus - and they happened to Him in such a short period of time - one week - and right His life on earth life came to an end - the days we call Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, and Good Friday - and then, the greatest of all, Holy Saturday night and Easter Sunday morning - because that was when Jesus kept the greatest promise He had ever made to us, and that is when the very best gift that God could give to us came into being - when Jesus woke up from being dead, and proved that God, the Father in Heaven, can make us live forever.

Now I won't be here at St. John Neumann's next week for all these wonderful celebrations - I have my own parish that I need to be in for those days. But that is the wonderful thing about the Catholic Church - no matter where you are in the whole wide world, no matter what language you speak, and no matter whether you are rich or poor, old or young, or just in-between - when we celebrate these great things about Jesus' life next week during Holy Week - we will all be doing the same thing. Just think about it - millions and millions of Catholic people all over the world. And when you think about it that way, even though I might be downtown, and you might be out here, we are really together - in one mind, one spirit, and one heart - and Jesus is the One who makes this happen.

Dear boys and girls, I hope you will all have a great Holy Week next week, and a fine Spring Break - but be very good and be very safe, because we don't want anything bad to happen at this beautiful time of year, or at any other time. I will be praying for you, and I hope you will pray for me too - and may the Lord, Jesus Christ, bless us all, our teachers, everyone who works at the school, and all the good moms and dads, who work so hard for us, every day, to make all the good things in life come true.

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