Waiting With Mary
Paschal Vigil Holy Saturday is Our Lady’s day par excellence. She alone had kept the faith, she knew her Son would achieve what He had promised, she knew He would rise. But she waited. And Holy Saturday is essentially a day of waiting, hopeful waiting, but waiting all the same. This long vigil that takes […]
Suffering Outside The Camp
Good Friday Jesus suffered outside the gate, to consecrate the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing the reproach that he bore. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the one that is to come (Heb 13:10-14). These words of the apostle were addressed […]
Totum Christum Passum
Maundy Thursday On Palm Sunday, we reflected upon the reason for uniting the joyful procession of the palms with the mournful reading of the passion, and we found that it is only through suffering that we can attain glory. Today, Maundy Thursday, the eyes of our minds and hearts turn to the upper room, the […]
The Victory of Suffering
Palm Sunday The celebration of Palm Sunday is quite simply about the victory of the cross, that is to say, the victory of redemptive suffering. That is the fundamental reason for which Christ Our Lord wanted to be greeted and honoured five days before His passion with shouts of joy by the Jewish people; it […]
The Blood that Cleanses
Passion Sunday In today’s Gospel, Our sweet Saviour admonishes the Pharisees: He who is of God hears the words of God; therefore you hear them not because you are not of God. St Gregory in his commentary on this passage admonishes us all to examine our conscience to see if we hear the words of […]
The Double Fiat
Annunciation It has been often remarked that it is no coincidence that the day of Christ’s entrance into the world and the day of His leaving it are the same: 25 March. Indeed, it was on this day that the Incarnate Word was conceived in the womb, and it was also on this day that […]
It’s because I’m for you that I’m against you
St Benedict In the heat of the Arian crisis, when nearly the whole world, including the bishops, had fallen into heresy, faced with accusations that he was pitting himself against the whole world, St Athanasius proclaimed: “If the world is against the truth, then I am against the world”. We might very well put those […]
Man of Silence and Sleep
St Joseph If true joy, as we pointed out yesterday, consists in being united with the sufferings of Jesus, then St Joseph certainly was a joyful man. Indeed, all the mysteries of the hidden life of Our Lord involved a great deal of suffering, and St Joseph was a major actor in it all. From […]
Perfect Joy
Fourth Sunday in Lent On this 4th Sunday in Lent, only three weeks before Easter, we are invited to rejoice, more precisely to give ourselves over to an exuberant, triumphant joy. One might wonder what could possibly be reason for jumping with joy in a world that has so many causes for inconsolable lamentation. Were […]
