“Sisters and Brothers of our one God – let us be amazed at the unique journey Jesus Christ takes. He demonstrates the greatest love the world has known, as during Holy Week and the Easter Triduum we see that our salvation and new life passes through the wood of the cross! Destruction meets new life; hell meets heaven; and death meets resurrection.” – Bishop Mark Hagemoen, Easter 2025 message
Bishop Mark Hagemoen’s Holy Week / Easter letter: PDF
Find Easter Triduum schedules for many of our parishes: LINK
Video message:
By Bishop Mark Hagemoen, Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon
Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ, greetings to you all as we approach the Holy Week and Easter Season in this Jubilee Year of Hope!
As we celebrate the Easter Triduum in this Jubilee Year’s Pilgrimage of Hope, and in this time of many external and personal challenges, it is interesting to notice the creative ways that people are “pilgrimaging.”
For instance, a few years ago a number of young adults expressed a desire to do a “team pilgrimage run” to get ready for the Holy Week and Easter season. The inspiration related their desire to be physically fit to being “spiritually fit” as well – recognizing that Lent is the ultimate time for the spiritual athlete. Whether we are younger or older, we are all called to an epic journey of self-examination, discipline and self-sacrifice, a heightened time of care for others, and a deepening of personal conversion and intimacy with God.
Thus, the “Lenten 40 Run” was launched, starting and ending at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, and travelling along both sides of the Meewasin Trail – twice past St. Paul Co-Cathedral – around the Saskatchewan River in central Saskatoon. The total distance of the four relay legs is 41.9 kilometres. Why not a full marathon length of 42 kilometres? Well, t0 allay pride. The purpose of this pilgrimage run is not to complete an athletic feat – rather it is to extend ourselves – personally and communally – as we embark into Holy Week and the Easter Triduum.
As I have said before, I always find that when I come to Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week, I am faced with a sense of tension. What unfolds is the great and loving gift of God, meeting the tragedy and complexity of human longing and failing.
One of the most memorable papal sayings that I fondly remember are the words of Pope John Paul II at World Youth Day at Toronto in 2002: “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father’s love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.”
Indeed, there is much to be concerned about in our world, in our communities, and yes, also in our own hearts. We have great aspirations and hopes! But, when we are very sober and honest, we admit that we are not perfect, and further that there is much in our world – and in our own lives – that calls for conversion and healing!
Pope Francis has spoken repeatedly about the need for us to rely on God’s mercy and forgiveness. As he states regarding this Jubilee Year of Hope: “Here, then, is the reason for the Jubilee: because this is the time for mercy. It is the favourable time to heal wounds, a time not to be weary of meeting all those who are waiting to see and to touch with their hands the signs of the closeness of God, a time to offer everyone, everyone, the way of forgiveness and reconciliation.”
We have now entered the Holy Week and Easter season – a time when we are profoundly confronted by the radical forgiveness of Jesus Christ, the guiltless Son of God who gives His life for our sins – so that we may have life… and have it abundantly! (see John 10:10).
Reflecting on Jesus’s meeting with Nicodemus, who seeks out Jesus because he has sensed that He can illuminate the darkness of his heart, Pope Francis says: “…Something no longer works in his life. He feels the need to change, but he does not know where to begin… This happens to all of us…If we do not accept to change, if we close ourselves up in inflexibility, in habits or our ways of thinking, we risk dying…. if we allow the Holy Spirit to generate new life in us, we will be born again. We will rediscover that life, which was perhaps fading in us.”
But change is not easy. On the one hand, the idea of growth and seeming improvement seems like a very good thing for us. However, it may mean giving up – even dying to – ways and ideas that we have become dependent on. To live without these things and ways may seem …well, quite impossible.
No wonder Saint John Henry Newman stated, “To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” For this great theologian, change is about ongoing conversion and true growth. But change can frighten us – especially if we fear that we must “give up” something that seems central to our being. Again, Pope Francis encourages: “Only by looking into the face of that which frightens us can we begin to be set free [even of] …our entire existence, all our evil.”
Sisters and Brothers of our One God – let us be amazed at the unique journey Jesus Christ takes. He demonstrates the greatest love the world has known, as during Holy Week and the Easter Triduum we see that our salvation and new life passes through the wood of the cross! Destruction meets new life; hell meets heaven; and death meets resurrection.
Let us ask ourselves: Why did Jesus die on the cross for us? Why did humanity crucify Christ? Do we still crucify Christ? If so, how does Christ show us as a new way? These are questions that must be faced and asked. Don’t rush the answers – sometimes that is the problem. Let us ask the questions, and stay in the eerie, mysterious silence of the response of Jesus Christ on the cross. And of course, then let us celebrate the Resurrection, new life, and this Jubilee Year of Hope – we celebrate because of what is possible for us – in Christ!
I wish you all a blessed Holy Week and Easter season as we continue our pilgrim journey of hope.
Bishop’s Easter Triduum schedule:
Bishop Mark Hagemoen will celebrate the following at the Cathedral of the Holy Family (also to be live-streamed at saskatoonmass.com):
7 p.m. Holy Thursday, Mass of Our Lord’s Supper, April 17
3 p.m. Good Friday Solemn Liturgy, April 18
7 p.m. Good Friday Stations of Cross April 18 – outdoors on grounds of Holy Family Cathedral
9 p.m. Holy Saturday Easter Vigil, April 19Bishop Hagemoen will celebrate Easter morning at St. Paul Co-Cathedral (in-person only):
10 a.m. Easter Sunday Mass, April 20