This week, we hear Our Lord’s promises of our resurrection from the dead from the prophet Ezekiel: “Thus says the Lord God: O my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them.” “I trust in the Lord,” affirms Psalm 130, and St. Paul tells us, “The One who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also.” The Gospel of John relates the story of the death and raising of Lazarus. The two-week period Passiontide begins this weekend. Church statues and crosses and crucifixes may be covered with veils, usually purple, simple and unadorned. Various authors describe different reasons for the veiling: shielding these beloved images helps us fast, in a sense, from images of God and his saints, and hunger for their return at the great Easter Solemnity. The shrouds also connote death, as the Church will journey through the Lord’s passion and death soon, and wait in silent vigil for the Resurrection at the end of the upcoming Holy Week. We also may view this allusion to death as a symbol of our own Lenten struggle to die to sin and be born anew at Easter. A Gospel of Passiontide in the Traditional form speaks of Jesus hiding himself, as we hide these images. Veiling statues also calls to mind Jesus’ hiding or veiling his divinity during his Passion. Another author likens the removal of these statues from our sight as one of the steps taken during this time in Lent, to hide and reduce more aspects or our faith, just as we had earlier put away the Gloria and Alleluia, and soon lose bells and the Mass itself at the end of Holy Week. The veils are removed before the Easter Vigil Mass.