Our entire community enters the spirit of prayer during the Sacred Triduum (the holy Three-Days-in-One), which is the celebration event of the Lord’s passion, death, and resurrection. Check the schedule at your parish church so that you may pray with your brothers and sisters during these Three Days.

Since our society attempts to ignore it, each of us can make Good Friday a meaningful day of sacrifice and reparation for the sins that led to the passion – Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. So, Friday needs to be a day of sacrifice. Make it a day of less food and no meat. You can do other things as well, such as giving up entertainment, but remember that Good Friday is a day of fasting and abstinence.

• Fasting means eating only one full meal. Two smaller meals may be taken. Snacking is not allowed. This obligation binds all Catholics from the ages of 18 through 59.

• Abstinence means that you do not eat meat. This obligation begins at age 14 and has no upper limit. It continues for the remainder of our lives.

Be mindful that when you go to Mass on Easter Sunday, go early. There are many visitors. In some parishes, provisions have been made for overflowing crowds.

Coming home to worship at Easter is not just for those who have fallen away; also important is the effort to realize that many of us live as if we have only “one foot” in the church. We may not have opened ourselves fully to the grace of Christ to be His effective witness to the world. Perhaps during these holy days, we will truly “Come Home” to Christ and His Church – mind, heart, body, and soul.

In your prayer, you might remember those who, in one way or another, are still struggling because of high inflation, others who are affected by violent crimes or natural disasters, and our brothers and sisters in Judaism who began their celebration of Passover with the First Seder on Saturday evening, April 12, through the eighth day the following Sunday.