Dear Family:
I want you to know that the Lord has blessed me abundantly from the moment He sent me to this wonderful community of faith, the community of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, the Little Flower, in Coral Gables — the community I am proud to now call my family. Thank you for your emotional, and spiritual support during this past three weeks since my mother felt ill and passed away. Your prayers, expressions of sympathy, and love have provided me and my siblings peace and support in this time of sorrow.
As we continue our Lenten journey, and as we move through these forty days, Mother Church invites us to reflect every Friday on the Stations of the Cross. This is an invitation into the mystery of Jesus’ death and resurrection. It is an invitation into the suffering and sorrows endured by Jesus on his way to the Cross. We must not forget that it is in the Cross that we find salvation, eternal life. This is an invitation for us to take up our own crosses, following Jesus’ example.
After being scourged brutally for no apparent reason, He, who knew no sin, was condemned to death, and instead of fighting this unjust action, he took the Cross freely and willingly for our sake. It is through these fourteen stations that we are able to see the love, the compassion, the mercy and the forgiveness of a man in love with his brothers and sisters.
In each of the stations there is so much wisdom and so much love offered for the human race, so that we can be called Children of God and have the ability to return to our heavenly Father, our creator, to whom humanity in its entirety belongs to. This is an invitation to compare our sufferings and sorrows with those of Jesus Christ, so that we, as he himself did, can take up the cross, our cross, and be victorious by obtaining immortality, the one Christ won for us.
To all of you, my dear family, thank you again for helping me in embracing my own cross during these days. I want to thank especially Fr. Manny, my brother in Christ, for his support and love, to my brother priests in our house, for their prayers and love, and to all of you that so graciously sympathized with me in my sorrow. I have seen in all of you Jesus Christ. I pray and hope that this Lenten Season will be fruitful to all, that by deepening in the knowledge of Jesus Christ, sharing in His peace and love in the Eucharist, and receiving His blessings in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we may all grow more in faith and love for Him and for one another.
Yours in Christ Jesus!
Fr. Omar