Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent
March 24th, 2023
Call to Action: 75
75. We call upon the federal government to work with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, churches, Aboriginal communities, former residential school students, and current landowners to develop and implement strategies and procedures for the ongoing identification, documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries or other sites at which residential school children were buried. This is to include the provision of appropriate memorial ceremonies and commemorative markers to honour the deceased children.
Suggestions for Almsgiving
Suggestions for Further Study
If you have time today, take a moment and watch Nikki’s full TEDx talk titled, “Decolonization Is For Everyone,” included in the Listening to Indigenous Voices guide from the Jesuit Forum for Social Faith and Justice.
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!
Friday, Mar. 24, 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.
By this point in our Lenten journeys, we have either given up or added an action or habit into our daily routines. Years ago, I recall a priest once saying, and I paraphrase, that through fasting, you find you are getting closer to God. Make it a permanent change and leave whatever it is behind for good. I fully admit that I've struggled and broken my Lenten commitment a few times this season, but something inside keeps telling me, “Begin again.”
Nikki Sanchez is a Pipil/Maya and Irish/Scottish academic, Indigenous media maker, and environmental educator. She says, “If I could just leave you with one message today, it would be this: This history is not your fault, but it absolutely is your responsibility.” As people of faith, within these settler-Indigenous relationships, it is our responsibility to move through guilt and shame and into a space of awareness and of decolonization.
This Lent, I ask myself: How can I make decolonization a permanent change in my life? How can I use my privilege to dismantle oppressive systems that allow me to occupy the territory I do now?
When I struggle with this work, I ask Creator for the strength to begin again.
—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: