One With Those Who Suffer

Today the Church remembers the Last Supper of the Lord, and she prepares to embark with Him on the road to Calvary. As Saint John Paul II wrote in his 1991 Message for Lent, it is today that we should become more aware of the intense suffering that Christ experienced:

As Lent draws to its culmination on Holy Thursday, the Liturgy recalls the institution of the Eucharist, the memorial of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. This Sacrament, in which the Church celebrates the depth of her faith, should lead us to become ever more profoundly aware of the poverty, suffering and persecution which Christ endured.

Not only should we allow this awareness to develop into deep gratitude, but we should also allow it to draw us into deep solidarity with the suffering poor, for the “Son of God, who became poor out of love for us, became one with those who suffer.”

As we find our converted selves completely dependent upon God and His will for us, John Paul II challenges us to see the completely dependent Christ in the poor:

As we look at Jesus Christ, the Good Samaritan, we cannot forget that from the poverty of the manger to the total abandonment of the Cross, he chose to become one with the “least.” Christ teaches us detachment from riches, trust in God and readiness to share. He urges us to look at our brothers and sisters who are poor and suffering from the point of view of one who – in poverty – knows what it is to be totally dependent upon God and to stand in absolute need of him.

Perhaps an encounter with the poor today will help us all to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection. John Paul II was able to do this during his last Lent on earth, for he found himself poor and suffering on death’s doorstep. He died ten years ago today, in fact, and so we ask him to pray for us all, that we may relieve Christ’s suffering in the poor.

The Liberating Road Of Conversion

Do you feel closer to God now than you did at the beginning of Lent? If not, there’s still time during this Holy Week. There is still time to allow His grace to draw you closer to Him.

Why should this be done? Well, as Saint John Paul II said in his 1982 Message for Lent:

If there is still some distance between God and ourselves, that can only be due to us and to the obstacles we place in the way of this coming close: the sin which is in our heart, the injustices that we commit, the hatred and divisions that we foster, everything that still prevents us from loving God with all our heart and our strength. The time of Lent is the special time for purification and penance, so as to allow our Savior to make us his neighbor and save us by his love.

The Church celebrates the Resurrection in six days, and in order to feel the joy of Easter we must realize how much we need a Savior. We must realize how empty we are without the risen Christ. In order to share in the overwhelming happiness experienced by the Apostles, we must undergo a conversion that leads our hearts to the Messiah!

“Penance, conversion: this is the road to follow; not a sad one, but a liberating one suggested by the Lenten period,” John Paul II wrote. Let us experience the freedom of conversion this Holy Week, as we travel with Christ from Calvary to the Resurrection.

St. John Paul II, Pray for Us!

Join Us Tomorrow!

Pray For Consecrated Religious Today

Living “in obedience, with nothing of one's own and in chastity,” consecrated persons profess that Jesus is the model in whom every virtue comes to perfection. His way of living in chastity, poverty and obedience appears as the most radical way of living the Gospel on this earth, a way which may be called divine, for it was embraced by him, God and man, as the expression of his relationship as the Only-Begotten Son with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. This is why Christian tradition has always spoken of the objective superiority of the consecrated life. Nor can it be denied that the practice of the evangelical counsels is also a particularly profound and fruitful way of sharing in Christ's mission, in imitation of the example of Mary of Nazareth, the first disciple, who willingly put herself at the service of God's plan by the total gift of self. Every mission begins with the attitude expressed by Mary at the Annunciation: “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38).

-Saint John Paul II, Vita Consecrata

During this Year of Consecrated Life, let us pray for all of those men and women living the evangelical counsels, that they might continue to share in the “Yes” of Mary that we celebrate today.

Love Is Not Resentful

Saint John Paul II forgives Mehmet Ali Ağca, the man who made an attempt on his life.
(CNS photo / Arturo Mari, L'Osservatore Romano)

As we’ve said here before, Lent is a time for conversion. It is therefore an “appropriate time for a profound re-examination of life,” Saint John Paul II wrote in his 2001 Message for Lent. The Lord gives us this opportunity to draw closer to Him, and so we must look closely at ourselves in order to see what’s holding us back.

One of those things that might be inhibiting us from reconciliation with Christ is our own refusal to reconcile our differences with others. Yet, forgiveness is the only path to peace in our relationships. And so it is the only path to peace in our relationship with God. Saint John Paul II wrote:

Forgiveness given and received enables a new kind of relationship among people, breaking the spiral of hatred and revenge and shattering the chains of evil, which bind the hearts of those in conflict with one another.

Now reconciling with others is no easy feat. This step towards conversion cannot be taken unless that conversion has already begun, with the grace of God as its guide. As the sainted pontiff wrote, one must trust in God as the Lord’s disciples did:

Brothers and sisters! In commenting upon the Lord’s teaching as he journeys to Jerusalem, Saint John Chrysostom recalls that Christ does not leave the disciples ignorant of the struggles and sacrifices that await them. Jesus stresses that it is hard but not impossible to renounce oneself when one can count on God’s help bestowed on us “through communion with the person of Christ.”

With God’s help and with a “fresh experience of his mercy,” giving and receiving forgiveness is possible, no matter how much hurt there is. God’s grace makes it easier to apologize, to accept an apology, to confess, and to accept forgiveness. And in these moments of reconciliation, there is so much peace. There is so much love!

St. Joseph, Most Just, Pray for Us!

May St. Joseph become for all of us an exceptional teacher in the service of Christ's saving mission, a mission which is the responsibility of each and every member of the Church: husbands and wives, parents, those who live by the work of their hands or by any other kind of work, those called to the contemplative life and those called to the apostolate.

This just man, who bore within himself the entire heritage of the Old Covenant, was also brought into the “beginning” of the New and Eternal Covenant in Jesus Christ. May he show us the paths of this saving Covenant as we stand at the threshold of the next millennium, in which there must be a continuation and further development of the “fullness of time” that belongs the ineffable mystery of the Incarnation of the Word.

May St. Joseph obtain for the Church and for the world, as well as for each of us, the blessing of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

-Saint John Paul II

The Jubilee Of Mercy

Last Friday, Pope Francis announced an extraordinary Jubilee dedicated to Divine Mercy. This Holy Year will begin on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception this coming December, and it will end on November 20, 2016—the Sunday we celebrate Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe.

The theme for this Jubilee Year comes from the Letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, in which St. Paul names God as “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4). Pope Francis challenges us to believe that this mercy is for us. He also challenges us to share it with others:

The call of Jesus pushes each of us never to stop at the surface of things, especially when we are dealing with a person. We are called to look beyond, to focus on the heart to see how much generosity everyone is capable. No one can be excluded from the mercy of God; everyone knows the way to access it and the Church is the house that welcomes all and refuses no one. Its doors remain wide open, so that those who are touched by grace can find the certainty of forgiveness. The greater the sin, so much the greater must be the love that the Church expresses toward those who convert.

Saint John Paul II led the Church through two Jubilee Years, in 1983 and 2000. Let us ask him and the Mother of Mercy to pray for the Church as she prepares to embark on this Holy Year.