As we stand at the threshold of the Triduum, the Great Paschal Days of our Salvation: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday (the Great Vigil of Easter) there are somethings to hold in mind:
Many people alienated from the Church are unable to bare their souls before they experience acceptance, welcome, and love.
Sins are Christians' failure to respond to Christ's call to holiness, their infidelity to their baptismal pledge as members of the covenant community, and obstacles to the Church's mission of signing salvation to all the world. It can no longer be enough for the sinner to feel forgiveness by God; penitents must experience and strive for reconciliation with their brothers and sisters as sign of reconciliation with God.
The need for reconciliation is for the believer, Christ's challenge to his Church to be converted, and the support that is needed to meet that challenge is present in his Spirit. In every case, the power of that Spirit, reconciling us to God in Christ, offers both challenge and support. The future of a reconciling community is ours to shape.
The Church ... must work for global peace and justice as well as respond to individual's needs for healing. It must struggle to eradicate all forms of division and discrimination and transform sinful social structures - within itself first - as well as strengthen individuals to bear up under oppression and resist sinful influences. Community rituals must be a prophetic protest against social evils and a means of sensitizing participants to the part they play in causing, perpetuating, or tolerating such evils.
Sacramental revitalization requires a sense of the Church as a reconciled and reconciling community, a community in which all members are coresponsible for mission and worship.
from James Dallen's The Reconciling Community
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