Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Lent
March 22nd, 2023
Call to Action: 73
73. We call upon the federal government to work with churches, Aboriginal communities, and former residential school students to establish and maintain an online registry of residential school cemeteries, including, where possible, plot maps showing the location of deceased residential school children.
Suggestions for Almsgiving
The 2023 Lenten Calendar is a project of CTA's Indigenous Solidarity Collective, a working group that addresses the Catholic Church's historical and current role in colonialization. To support more projects from working groups like this one, please consider making a contribution!
Wednesday, Mar. 22, 2023
Missing Children and Burial Information
Call To Action's 2023 Lenten Calendar is a collaboration between the Indigenous Solidarity Collective and Anti-Racism Team (ART). This calendar provides more than 40 days of prayer and study to lead members into action and solidarity with Indigenous communities. For holy days and Sundays during Lent, we'll publish a reflection from an ART or Indigenous Solidarity Collective member on why we're committed to undoing racism and Indigenous oppression in our own communities and biases and what it means to do this work as Catholics. Following each meditation or reflection, we will feature a call to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
I’m an elementary teacher on unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. My school has the privilege of having an Indigenous Education Worker come once a week to work with our students.
Last fall, the Truth and Reconciliation assembly held at our school addressed the question: “What does it mean to remember?”
A fourth-grade student casually answered, “It means not to forget.”
This is what Indigenous communities are asking settlers to do: to not forget the past by omission, but instead, to tell its painful truth. Richard Wagamese, an Ojibway author from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario, writes in his beautiful book, Embers – One Ojibway’s Meditations, “Remember to remember.”
In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus stirs up more of a ruckus with the Jewish authorities by making a bold claim–that he is doing the work of his Father. He goes even further and claims that he has equality with the Father (Jn 5: 23). As followers of Christ—not necessarily followers of religious authorities—we must do the work indeed. We must do the work of reconciliation and of decolonization, of bringing these 94 calls to fruition. We must remember to remember.
—Meditation by Indigenous Solidarity Collective member Jessica Lemes da Silva
As part of your Lenten practice, please consider donating to one or more of the
following organizations: