As the church moves through Lent to Holy Week, phrases from Jesus’ farewell discourse to his Apostles in the Gospel according to St. John are proclaimed in church and recalled in our memory. The words are powerful and should resonate in our souls. “Dwell in my love,” we hear Jesus telling the apostles and us as well. Dwelling in love brings our inner experience into line with Jesus’ external command: “Love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 13:34). Ten years ago, I issued a pastoral letter on the sin of racism with the title, “Dwell in my Love.” In recent years, our moral concern has turned to the plight of undocumented immigrants and the threatened break-up of their families; to the consequences for families of the economic recession, as jobs are lost and homes are foreclosed; to the ongoing warfare in Afghanistan, a war now almost 10 years old; to the loss of liberties, both civil and religious; to the scarcely concealed despair of a society that seems to have lost its future in a world dominated by trends we do not understand and cannot control. Among our many moral concerns, racism continues to furnish a long-lasting substratum. It is the original sin of American society, enshrined as race slavery in our very Constitution for almost ninety years. My pastoral letter, “Dwell in my Love,” was issued on April 4, because that is the anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Our society commemorates a person’s birth to this life; the church celebrates a person’s birth to the next life. Only in a person’s death does the true meaning of his or her life become evident. Saints prayed to be conscious at their death so that they could surrender their entire life to the Lord in their last moments. Jesus’ death on the cross tells us what his entire life was given to and what it was given for. In the last 10 years, the Office for Racial Justice of the archdiocese, under the direction of Sister Anita Baird, has continued to use my pastoral letter on racism, “Dwell in my Love,” as a teaching tool to stir consciences, to change attitudes and to influence behavior (To read the letter, visit www.archdiocesechgo. org/cardinal/dwellinmylove). Racism has many dimensions: personal, institutional, spatial and cultural, and the pastoral letter addresses each of them. I am grateful for all the work that has gone into confronting the many manifestations of the sin of racism, which still lurks, perhaps less openly but nonetheless really, in our institutions and our souls. The pastoral letter was written 10 years ago because a young black man, Lenard Clark, had been terribly beaten by some young white men, who were graduates of a Catholic high school. A similar incident occurred just a few months ago, although without the same degree of violence. Only if this incident succeeds in keeping the sin of racism clearly before our eyes as we examine our conscience this Lent will something good come out of a hateful act. The archdiocesan anti-racism Lenten calendar (www.dwellinmylove.org) contains passages from Holy Scripture that speak to the price racism exacts not only in our society but in our souls. Resisting complicity with racism is impossible if we are not aware of it or do not notice it. Scripture both confronts and heals as we submit ourselves to God’s word each day, but especially during this Lenten season with its call to repentance. At the beginning of the Liturgy of the Hours each Lenten weekday, we hear: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Psalm 95). The church is to be a leaven in society, a communion of love in a divided world. The church continues to grow. Statisticians inform us that there are 69 new Catholics every second, 2,169 new Catholics every hour, and 52,055 new Catholics every 24 hours. In the Archdiocese of Chicago, despite demographic decrease in the city, the number of Catholics holds steady at 2.3 million. What if each Catholic here and around the world was determined, with open heart, to accept the challenge of the Second Vatican Council to be Christ’s messenger for uniting the peoples of the world around him? It seems to me the world would be very different as we prepare to celebrate Easter next year. The forces of division are many, and many of them are institutionalized in the political and cultural and economic life of our society. The church and her faithful should not be party to these divisions, because they deny the fundamental truths of our faith: we are all made in God’s image and likeness and we are all redeemed by Jesus Christ. Jesus warns that some at least will deny the truth he came to reveal; their hearts will remain hardened, sometimes even in the name of freedom or progress or rights that contradict moral goods. Lenten observance gives us good reason to hope that we will not be among them here or in the life to come. If we hold each other in prayer, God will help us to dwell in his love.