Support Holy Land, place the Lord trod

March 13, 2008

My dear friends in Christ,

As we approach Holy Week and our final preparations before the joy of Easter, we ponder with deep humility and penitential grief the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of His people. We follow in spirit in His footsteps along the Way of the Cross, and we see in the Holy Land today the same places where our Lord trod.

As in our Lord’s own day, the Holy Land is torn by violence and poverty, ignorance and fear. In our baptismal identity with Jesus Christ, we feel all that He felt and feels for the worldly home He knew; and we reach out with Him to face down that suffering by the power of transforming love.

On Good Friday, a day of great holiness and longing, deep reflection and purging grief, we unite with Christ on the Cross in a special way. Our solidarity with Him makes us also one with each other in His Body, the Church. It is our own family that suffers in the Holy Land today.

Therefore, we take up a special collection on Good Friday for the needs of the Holy Land. In the words of Pope Paul VI, this is "not only for the Holy Places but above all for those pastoral, charitable, educational, and social works which the Church supports in the Holy Land for the welfare of their Christian brethren and of the local communities."

Please support this collection with your generous contribution, and especially with your unceasing prayers for peace. Peace in the Holy Land would be a great sign of the power of Christ’s love to change the world, and of the unity in His Body of all the baptized.

May the final days of our Lenten pilgrimage bring us to the true joy of Christ’s Resurrection, and strengthen our devotion to live His new life of grace!

Your brother in Christ,

Most Reverend R. Walker Nickless
Bishop of Sioux City