“I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; at a crossroads so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek . . . at the kind of place where cynics talk smut and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where he died. And that is what he died about.” ~George Macleod
Month: March 2018
Maundy Thursday
“In the washing of the feet, we see Jesus entering into a parable, teaching his disciples by example what it means to be the greatest by becoming the least, inverting the normal understandings of power and deference, making service the measure of greatness and linking the acceptance of grace to the purification of one’s life. All this could be written about or spoken of, but Jesus simply did it.” ~Michael Sean Winters
Wednesday of Holy Week
“The 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
Tuesday of Holy Week
Monday of Holy Week
“The agonizing pain and loneliness Christ must have felt as he hung on the cross is too fearful to imagine; yet even then he cried out, “Father, into thy hands I give my spirit.” Here we find the crowning of faith. Even the most intense suffering and feelings of God-forsakenness could not sway his faith in his and our Father: he gave his spirit into God’s hands. If we want to be healed of the wounds made by Satan’s tricks and arrows, we must find this same unyielding trust in God, so that even if we feel nothing yet, we are able to give ourselves absolutely and without reserve to him with all we are and have. Ultimately, all we have is our sin. But if we lay it before him like children, he will give us forgiveness, cleansing, and peace of heart; and these lead to a love that cannot be described.” ~J. Heinrich Arnold
March 23: Saint Turibius of Mongrovejo
March 22: Saint Lea
“We must not allow … money to weigh us down, or lean upon the staff of worldly power. We must not seek to possess both Christ and the world. No; things eternal must take the place of things transitory; and since, physically speaking, we daily anticipate death, if we wish for immortality we must realize that we are but mortal.” ~St. Jerome, from a letter eulogizing Saint Lea
We are not born at random
“Realize it, my brethren; —every one who breathes, high and low, educated and ignorant, young and old, man and woman, has a mission, has a work. We are not sent into this world for nothing; we are not born at random; . . . God sees every one of us; He creates every soul, He lodges it in the body, one by one, for a purpose. He needs, He deigns to need, every one of us. He has an end for each of us; we are all equal in His sight, and we are placed in our different ranks and stations, not to get what we can out of them for ourselves, but to labor in them for Him. As Christ has His work, we too have ours; as He rejoiced to do His work, we must rejoice in ours also.” ~Blessed John Henry Newman
March 21: St. Enda of Aran
God of Mercy, You gave us Saint Enda of Aran to proclaim the riches of Christ. By the help of his prayers may we grow in knowledge of You, be eager to do good, and learn to walk before You by living the truth of the gospel. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever. Amen