Thursday of the Fourth Week of Lent
March 23rd, 2023
Call to Action: 74
74. We call upon the federal government to work with the churches and Aboriginal community leaders to inform the families of children who died at residential schools of the child’s burial location, and to respond to families’ wishes for appropriate commemoration ceremonies and markers, and reburial in home communities where requested.
Suggestions for Almsgiving
Suggestions for Further Reading
A great place to start is by looking into the resources at The Partnership with Native Americans website, which includes a fact sheet on Indian Boarding Schools in the United States. You can download the fact sheet here.
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!
Thursday, Mar. 23, 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.
In today’s scripture passage, Jesus publicly makes his defense to the religious authorities about who he is. Jesus declares the following witnesses: John the Baptist; his own teachings and miracles (that the Father gave him); the testimony of the Father (i.e. Jesus’s baptism and transfiguration); the testimony of Scripture; and the testimony of Moses. Those are compelling testimonies, and many would say this is enough evidence to state that Jesus was God in human form. However, there’s a difference between intellectually understanding this and being whole-heartedly committed and trusting that Jesus is the Son of Man.
Indigenous communities are asking us to bear witness to historical truths; to acknowledge the evidence, to believe it, and to act because of it. In her 2021 article, "The American Church Needs to Reckon with its Legacy in Indigenous Boarding Schools," Potawatomi author Kaitlin Curtice writes:
The church has a responsibility to tell the truth, and this is going to be a long process. If we are committed to this process, it is going to take a lot of time and energy…. But my hope is that, at some point, there will be some people within these institutions who will start speaking up so we don’t have to. The work of true solidarity, the practice of true kinship, will lead us toward communities having these conversations, and one day, I hope, toward the American church asking who they have been and who they want to be.
We must be "the people within these institutions" who start to speak up.
—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: