ON RETREAT

Alleluia!

Christ is Risen!!

The Lord is Risen indeed!

Alleluia!

 

Dear Reader, daily posts are temporally suspended while I’m away on retreat. Posting will resume Monday, April 18, 2016.

 

Please pray for traveling mercies

and Holy Spirit-filled retreat.

 

Thank you and God Bless you!

 

Easter Monday

easter monday

Anxiety and fear are what we know best in this fantastic century of ours. Wars and rumors of wars. From civilization itself to what seemed the most unalterable values of the past, everything is threatened or already in ruins. We have heard so much tragic news that when the news is good we cannot hear it. But the proclamation of Easter Day is that all is well. And as a Christian, I say this not with the easy optimism of one who has never known a time when all was not well but as one who has faced the cross in all its obscenity as well as in all its glory, who has known one way or another what it is like to live separated from God. In the end, his will, not ours, is done. Love is the victor. Death is not the end. The end is life. His life and our lives through him, in him. Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream. Christ our Lord has risen. ~Frederick Buechner

Easter Sunday

 

Alleluia!

Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed!

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Resurrection

Look up, you captives, crowding to the water,
Look up, Ezechiel, and see the open heavens
Salute you with the vision of the winged Evangelists.
You with your ankles in the water and your garments white,
Lift up your heads, begin to sing:
And let your sights, exulting, rise and meet
The miracle of living creatures
In their burning, frowning flight.
The message of their lamps and fires
Warns you: make ready for the Face that speaks like lightning,
Sets free the song of everlasting glory
That now sleeps, in your paper flesh, like dynamite.
~an excerpt from The Victory, by Thomas Merton

Good Friday

Cedric-Charleuf_Crucifixion

Crucifixion by Cedric Charleuf

“If Christ is God, He cannot sin, and if suffering was a sin in and by itself, He could not have suffered and died for us. However, since He took the most horrific death to redeem us, He showed us in fact that suffering and pain have great power.” ~E.A. Bucchianeri

Maundy Thursday

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35)

Jesus_washing_Peter's_feet

Jesus Washing Peter’s Feet

Wednesday of Holy Week

san damiano cross-cut copyThe heart is stretched through suffering, and enlarged. But O the agony of this enlarging of the heart, that one may be prepared to enter into the anguish of others!…The cross as dogma is painless speculation; the cross as lived suffering is anguish and glory. Yet God, out of the pattern of his own heart, has planted the cross along the road of holy obedience. And he enacts in the hearts of those he loves the miracle of willingness to welcome suffering and to know it for what it is – the final seal of his gracious love. ~Thomas R. Kelly, Rich in Years

Tuesday of Holy Week

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The image Jesus left with the world, the cross, the most common image in the Christian religion, is proof that God cares about our suffering and pain. He died of it. Today the image is coated with gold and worn around the necks of beautiful girls, a symbol of how far we can stray from the reality of history. But it stands, unique among all religions of the world. Many of them have gods. But only one has a God who cared enough to become a man and to die. ~Philip Yancey, Where is God When it Hurts?

Monday of Holy Week

Cross

 Who is Christ if not the Word of God: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God? This Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us. He had no power of himself to die for us: he had to take from us our mortal flesh. This was the way in which, though immortal, he was able to die; the way in which he chose to give life to mortal men: he would first share with us, and then enable us to share with him. Of ourselves we had no power to live, nor did he of himself have the power to die.  In other words, he performed the most wonderful exchange with us. Through us, he died; through him, we shall live. ~St. Augustine of Hippo

St. Cyril of Jerusalem

St-Cyril

Cyril of Jerusalem, Bishop and Doctor, c. 315-386

“And as Christ was in reality crucified, and buried, and raised, and you are in Baptism accounted worthy of being crucified, buried, and raised together with Him in a likeness, so is it with the unction also. As He was anointed with an ideal oil of gladness, that is, with the Holy Ghost, called oil of gladness, because He is the author of spiritual gladness, so ye were anointed with ointment, having been made partakers and fellows of Christ. But beware of supposing this to be plain ointment. For as the Bread of the Eucharist, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, is mere bread no longer, but the Body of Christ, so also this holy ointment is no more simple ointment, nor (so to say) common, after invocation, but it is Christ’s gift of grace, and, by the advent of the Holy Ghost, is made fit to impart His Divine Nature. Which ointment is symbolically applied to thy forehead and thy other senses; and while thy body is anointed with the visible ointment, thy soul is sanctified by the Holy and life-giving Spirit.” ~St. Cyril of Jerusalem