Dear Members of the Providence College Community:

Yesterday the members of our community who are Jewish began their celebration of Passover, and we pray with them and for them that this remembrance of God's liberation of the people of Israel will bring them renewed blessing. 

Those of us who are Christian enter into the sacred Triduum today.  We commemorate Christ's celebration of the Passover with his disciples, his death on the Cross, and his resurrection into glory.  In a poem entitled "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection," the Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:  "In a flash, at a trumpet clash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am."  In taking upon himself our sinful estrangement from God on the Cross, Christ has made it possible for us to share his eternal life with the Father in the Spirit.  In the uncertainty of this time, we need to remember that we were made for eternity, "the life of the world to come."  The victory of Christ has opened up our passage from death to life.  We are becoming "what Christ is."  May the comfort of the Resurrection bring you and yours joy and peace this Easter.

Rev. Brian J. Shanley, O.P.