May is a month of transitions. Children celebrate the end of the school year and the beginning of summer break. College students return home or perhaps begin an internship related to their area of study. Families gather for First Communion and Mother’s Day celebrations and look forward to upcoming vacations. With the passage from spring to summer, we spend more time outdoors and even contemplate the changes in the natural world as trees, shrubs, flowers and crops burst into life.

This is also a season in which significant milestones are met in the lives of many young people. Graduates look forward to beginning a new stage of their education, starting down a career path or entering a trade. Many young couples begin their married life together. Within our young people’s faith journeys, this is a season when many receive the Sacrament of Confirmation, and guided by the Holy Spirit, set out to discover all that God has in store for them and the gifts they have to offer to the life of the Church.
We also thank God for the continued gift of young men who respond to His call to serve as priests. Later this month, we will gather as a local Church at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Peter in Chains to celebrate the ordination of seven men to the priesthood; seven newly ordained priests who will begin their ministry at parishes throughout the archdiocese.

In a particular way, the Church also looks to Mary during this month and praises God for her example of fidelity and generosity, as well as her tremendous contributions to God’s plan of salvation, even at a young age. Pope Francis recently encouraged young people to look to Mary as a model of faith. “In the heart of the Church, Mary shines forth. She is the supreme model for a youthful Church that seeks to follow Christ with enthusiasm and docility. While still very young, she accepted the message of the angel, yet she was not afraid to ask questions (cf. Lk. 1:34). With open heart and soul, she replied, ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord’ (Lk. 1:38)” (Christus vivit, 43).

Over the centuries there have also been many young men and women, even boys and girls, whom we now venerate among the saints – youthful hearts who sought from an early age to dedicate their lives to God and to service of others. Pope Francis says, “The heart of the Church is also full of young saints who devoted their lives to Christ, many of them even to dying a martyr’s death. They were precious reflections of the young Christ; their radiant witness encourages us and awakens us from our lethargy” (CV, 49). Each of us, no matter our age, can also reflect the radiance of Christ’s love to the world around us.

As we pass through this month which is marked by moments of transition, accomplishment, celebration and change, may we also strive for spiritual renewal, reinvigorating our hearts with youthfulness and grace. Over the years of our earthly life, we must learn to rekindle the fire of God’s love which He infused into our hearts at Baptism, strengthened by the grace of Confirmation, and nourishes each time we receive the Eucharist. The work of conversion to the gospel is never completed. May this time of new beginnings afford us the opportunity to set out again with youthful wonder and hope toward all the good which God has in store for those who love Him.

We begin April with the liturgical commemoration of the Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. There are cries of “Hosanna,” preparations for the Passover Feast, plots of betrayal, moments of intimacy, fear and loneliness. Only after passing through the darkness of Good Friday and the silence of Holy Saturday do we experience the light of the Resurrection as it overcomes the darkness at the beginning of the Great Easter Vigil. We are witnesses to the Lord’s triumph over sin and death, but we also see the havoc of suffering and the pain which He endured as consequences of sin.

Pope St. John Paul II clearly stated that our “redemption was accomplished through the Cross of Christ, that is, through His suffering” (Salvifici doloris, 3). He goes on to say that through our union with Christ in baptism, we, as the members of Christ’s Church, are given a share in His work of redemption. The Holy Father said this happens in a particular way when suffering enters our life. “This happens, as we know, at different moments in life, it takes place in different ways, it assumes different dimensions; nevertheless, in whatever form, suffering seems to be, and is, almost inseparable from man’s earthly existence” (SD, 3).

Each of us at one time or another, and to varying degrees, is subject to suffering in this world which is wounded by sin. This is not the world as God intended it to be from the beginning. Through the Paschal Mystery of Christ and by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, God has redeemed the world, but its restoration in Christ is not yet perfectly complete. Sin is still being purged until the Kingdom of God is fully established. In the meantime, each of us, baptized into the suffering and death of Christ, is called to share in the mystery of Christ’s redemptive suffering. We suffer as we root out sin from our own lives, and we suffer because sin exists in the world around us. Suffering is, as Pope John Paul II said, inevitable in this world.

But how are we to respond to suffering? Many turn away from God when they experience suffering, thinking that any God who is truly good would not permit us to experience such things. Yet only God is capable of bringing good out of the most challenging and painful moments in our lives. In the Resurrection of Christ, God triumphs over sin and even death. These do not have the last word and are not definitive. Reflecting on this, St. Paul exclaimed, “Death is swallowed up in victory. Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:54-55).
This mystery is precisely what we celebrate at Easter: Christ has overcome sin, suffering and death. Because of the Resurrection, we can have hope in something greater than life’s limitations in this broken world. Although we do not cease to experience limitations and suffering, they are not without meaning. Suffering, through the Cross of Christ, has become a means by which we share in Christ’s redemptive work. Through His greatest act of love, Jesus accompanies us when we suffer and invites us to join Him in offering them for the benefit of all. Therefore, our moments of suffering are not empty and void; rather, they are an avenue by which God’s grace flows upon a world in need.

As he endured various trials, St. Paul reflected on suffering united to Christ’s and declared, “it is Christ in you, the hope for glory” (Col. 1:27). We Christians have an opportunity, even in our suffering, to be ambassadors of hope!