Jesus, the Physician

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus performs many miracles. He heals people from different social classes. He heals Jews and non-Jews. He even heals sinners. His healings are not just physical. Though he does heal people of their physical ailment (blindness, paralysis, flow of blood, leprosy, a withered hand, and so on), he also and more importantly heals people of their spiritual ailments (most notably forgiving their sins). As a result, Jesus is known as a physician, a healer. Since he is God, he is the Divine Physician.

The Healing of the Paralytic

I encourage you to slowly read through this scene. (Mk 2.1-12) Every time I do, I am struck by the choice of words.

A man is paralyzed. Does he ask to go to Christ? No, the text just says his friends bring him. A man is sick. His friends take him to Christ. Simple. However, they can't get in. The house is packed. The place is full. Do they give up? Do they say, "Well, we tried"? No. They persist. Without ceasing, they—in a sort of prayer—continue to get their friend to the One they believe in. Does the friend say anything? Does the friend say he wants to go to Christ? No. The friend is sick and paralyzed. For whatever reason, he is quiet, as if he cannot talk, as if he is too sick to communicate his desires or voice his protests. Yet friends are friends. They will not be turned away. They will continue to try for a friend, for a loved one.

The friends raise the paralytic up to the roof and lower him down through an opening. Now, the key, the word that always resonates: "... their ..."

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "My son, your sins are forgiven."

We remember that Jesus forgives his sins. As well, he soon heals the man of the paralysis. That is what we have come to expect from Jesus. But why? Why did Jesus do it? The text reveals the answer: "And when Jesus saw their faith ..."

Their faith.

Jesus saw their faith and was moved. Jesus saw what they had done. Jesus saw that a group of believers in him loved a friend. Jesus saw that this group did not let crowds or a full building get in the way of transporting their friend to him. Jesus saw that this group risked to get their friend to him. They raised him up to the roof, made an opening, and lowered their paralyzed friend down into Jesus' midst.

Because of their faith, he turned to the paralytic and forgave the man his sins. Jesus did not forgive him because of anything he (the paralytic) had said or done. No. Jesus forgave the man because of the man's friends. More precisely, Jesus acted because of the faith of the man's friends.

We can help our friends and loved ones by carrying them to Jesus, not letting obstacles of whatever sort get in the way. Thus, we truly become "co-workers" with the Lord. (1 Cor 3.9) We bring to him and thus help him in the work of salvation, in the work of saving souls.

This is Jesus, the Divine Physician, the one who heals those brought to him out of faith, those we hope he turns to and once again utters those sought after words: I say to you, rise ... and go home. (Mk 2.11)

Empty Tomb

When Mary Magdalen came to the tomb and did not find the Lord's body, she thought it had been taken away and so informed the disciples.

After they came and saw the tomb, they too believed what Mary had told them. The text then says: "The disciples went back home," and it adds: "but Mary wept and remained standing outside the tomb."

We should reflect on Mary's attitude and the great love she felt for Christ; for though the disciples had left the tomb, she remained. She was still seeking the one she had not found, and while she sought she wept; burning with the fire of love, she longed for him who she thought had been taken away. And so it happened that the woman who stayed behind to seek Christ was the only one to see him. For perseverance is essential to any good deed, as the voice of truth tell us: "Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved."

--St. Gregory the Great

The Risen SON: Easter Sunday

Christos Anesti!

"I did not make you for the dungeon." In this Easter hour let us ask the Lord to visit the dungeons of this world; ... Let us ask him to enter into the spiritual prisons of this age, into the darkness of our lack of truth, revealing himself as the Victor who tears down the gates and says to us, "I, your God, have become your Son. Come out! I have not created you to be in prison for ever. I did not make you for the dungeon." In his play No Exit Jean Paul Sartre portrays man as a being who is hopelessly trapped. He sums up his gloomy picture of man in the words, "Hell is other people". This being so, hell is everywhere, and there is no exit, the doors are everywhere closed.

Christ, however, says to us, "I, your God, have become your Son. Come out!" Now the exact opposite is true: heaven is other people. Christ summons us to find heaven in him, to discover him in others and thus to be heaven to each other. He calls us to let heaven shine into this world, to build heaven here. Jesus stretches out his hand to us in his Easter message, in the mystery of the sacraments, so that Easter may be now, so that the light of heaven may shine forth in this world and the doors may be opened. Let us take his hand! Amen.

--Joseph Ratzinger (Pope BenedictXVI)

Alithos Anesti!

CHRISTOS ANESTI! Christ Is Risen

Only since Easter can we really utter the first article of faith; only on the basis of Easter is this profession rich and full of consolation: I believe in God, the Father Almighty. For it is only from the Lamb that we know that God is really Father, really Almighty.

This greatest festival of the Church's year encourages us, by looking at him who was slain and is risen, to discover the place where heaven is opened. If we comprehend the message of the Resurrection, we recognize that heaven is not completely sealed off above the earth. Then--gently and yet with immense power--something of the light of God penetrates our life. Then we shall feel the surge of joy ....

--Joseph Ratzinger (Pope BenedictXVI)

Christos Anesti!

The Son Is Rising

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (Jn 1:5)


Easter is concerned with something unimaginable. Initially the event of Easter comes to us solely through the word, not through the senses. So it is all the more important for us to be won over by the immensity of this word. Since, however, we can only think by employing sense images, the faith of the Church has always translated the Easter message into symbols which point to things that the word cannot express. The symbol of light ... plays a special part; the praise of the Paschal candle--a symbol of life in the midst of the darkened church--is actually a praise of him who proved victor over death. Thus the event of long ago is translated into our present time: where light conquers darkness, something of the Resurrection takes place.

--Joseph Ratzinger (Pope BenedictXVI)

Arise from the Dead

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. I have not created you to be in prison forever. I did not make you for the dungeon.
--Epiphanius

Holy Saturday : Christ the Swimmer

It is similar to a man in the middle of a raging river, covered by water. He lies lifeless, drowning in the midst of horrible, dreadful monsters. If a man who does not know how to swim wishes to save the drowning person, he likewise will perish and be drowned. Certainly, what is needed is an expert swimmer to dive into the deep water, swim out, and save him who was drowning with wild monsters all around him. [...] In a similar way, man has been plunged into the abyss of darkness and the depths of death. He is suffocating and has lost God’s life within himself, surrounded by ferocious beasts. Who is able to penetrate into those depths of hell and death except that very Workman himself, who fashioned the human body? He himself penetrates into two parts, namely, the depths of hell and the deepest region of the human heart where the soul with all its thoughts is held captive by death. And he leads out of the dark depths the dead Adam.

--St. Macarius of Egypt

Holy Saturday : Your Heart Is a Tomb

When you hear that […] the Lord freed the souls from hell […] and that he descended into hell […], do not think that this does not have any personal meaning for you. […] For your heart is a tomb and a sepulcher. When the prince of evil and his angels have built their nest there and have built roads and highways on which the powers of Satan walk about inside your mind and in your thoughts, then, really, are you not a hell and a sepulcher and a tomb dead to God?

[…] But the Lord descends into the souls of those who seek him. He goes into the depths of the hellish heart and there he commands death, saying: “Release those captive souls that seek after me, those that you hold by force in bondage.” He breaks through the heavy stones that cover the soul. He opens the tombs. He truly raises to life the dead person and leads that captive soul forth out of the dark prison.

--St. Macarius of Egypt

Holy Saturday : The Light in the Darkness

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (Jn 1:5)

For the East the image of Redemption is the descent into Hades: the bursting open of the eternally-closed gate, when Christ stretches out his hand to the first Adam who, hardly trusting his eyes, sees the Easter light in the darkness of death.

--Hans Urs von Balthasar

Holy Saturday : He Descended into Hell

The icon ... represents as it were the mysterious inner dimension of the event of Easter which is indicated by a few words of Scripture and which we profess in the Creed when we say, "He descended into hell". In the perspective of the icon, this is an affirmation concerning Jesus' victory. The icon shows him having shattered the bolt of this world, having torn its gates from their hinges. It depicts him as the "stronger man" who has opened and penetrated the domain of the "strong man". It portrays him as the Victor, having burst through the supposedly impregnable fortress of death, such that death is now no longer a place of no return; its doors lie open. Christ, in the aura of his wounded love, stands in this doorway, addresses the still somnolent Adam and takes him by the hand to lead him forth. The liturgy of Holy Saturday circles around this event.

--Joseph Ratzinger (Pope BenedictXVI)

He brings consolation to this place of desolation, he brings warmth to this place of infernal cold.

--Adrienne von Speyr

Christ's suffering, the greatest one could conceive, was like that of the damned who cannot be damned any more. That is, his suffering went to the length of infernal punishment ... He alone through such a death entered into glory. He wanted to experience the poena sensus like the damned in Hell for the glorifying of his Father, and so as to show that one should obey the Father even to the utmost torture. That means: praising and glorifying God in every possible way for our justification--which is what Christ has done.

--Nicholas of Cusa

Lord, Make Me Your Shroud

The eyelids closed, the lips together, the composed features of the face—more than making us think of a dead person, it makes us think of a man immersed in profound and silent meditation. It seems to be a translated image of an ancient antiphon for Holy Saturday: Caro mea requiescet in spe, “my body rests in hope.” The ancient homily for Holy Saturday in the Office of Readings also acquires a particular power when it is read in front of the shroud:



“Something strange is happening—there is great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep.”

Theology tells us that at his death, Christ’s soul was separated from his body as is the case for any person who dies, but his divinity remained united both to his soul and to his body. The shroud is the most perfect representation of this christological mystery. That body is separated from the soul, but not from divinity. Something divine hovers over the face, tortured but full of the majesty, of the Christ of the shroud.

In order to perceive this, we only need to compare the shroud with other representations of the dead Christ by human artists, for example, the dead Christ of Andrea Mantegna and even more that of Holbein the Younger, in the art museum in Basel, Switzerland, which represents the body of Christ in all the rigidity of death and the incipient decomposition of its members. Dostoevsky, who had long contemplated this painting on one of his trips, said that one could easily lose one’s faith before this image. Before the shroud, on the contrary, one can find faith or find it again if it has been lost.

The face of Christ on the shroud is like a boundary, a wall that separates two worlds: the world of people full of anxiety, violence, and sin, and the world of God that is inaccessible to evil. It is a shore on which all the waves break. It is as if, in Christ, God said to the force of evil what he said to the ocean in the book of Job: Thus far shall you come, and no farther.

And here shall your proud waves be stayed. (Job 38:11) Before the shroud we can pray, “Lord, make me your shroud. When you are deposed from the cross again and come to me in the sacrament of your body and blood, let me enshroud you with the burial garments of my faith and my love in such a way that your features imprint themselves on my soul and leave on it an indelible trace. Lord, make the rough, coarse cloth of my humanity your shroud.”

--Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa

Good Friday : Entombment of Christ

This is what is known as a first-class funeral.
The solicitous ones seem to be chiefly intellectuals.
With solemn gestures they flourish gravecloths,
making a liturgy,
absorbing themselves in its dignity.
Nothing indicates they expect a resurrection.

The corpse is swathed according to custom.
Only the face cannot be subdued.
All suffering stares from that head.
Impossible to wrap it in a great and festive forgetting.

So already his unquiet image haunts heads and hearts.
Already the spirit is freed.
Already the Easter question takes shape...

But silently.
For tomorrow is only Holy Saturday.
The day when God is dead,
and the Church holds her breath.
The strange day that separates life and death
in order to join them in a marriage beyond all human thought.
The day which leads through hell,
and, after all the paths of the world,
into a pathless existence.

--Hans Urs von Balthasar

Good Friday : The Deposition of Christ

Jesus is taken down from the cross and his mother--accepting the pain that his Son bore for the sake of the world--is there to receive him in her bosom. Each of the seven swords which transfixed the heart of the mother was Mary's renewed assent to her Son's sufferings. It is beyond human comprehension that a person should say "yes" to everything, even to the most harrowing pain.

In her unconditional "yes" Mary becomes the "redeemed earth," capable of receiving on her lap the dead body of the Redeemer. This scene wrapped in silence reveals that Christ's Passion was not suffered in vain: Mary in this moment of weariness and infinite sorrow, represents humanity who accepts with gratitutde heaven's blessings. In the end her Son's body is not buried ina cold and inanimate matter ("matter" comes from the Latin word mater meaning "mother") but it is placed in the maternal and fruitful bosom of Mary, a prototype of incarnate love which finds its culmination in Mary. The Pieta therefore is not a fleeting image of sorrow but one engraved forever in human history: a mysterious image portraying maternal fecundity enshrouding the dead Son's body--the source of a new fecundity for the mother.

--Hans Urs von Balthasar

Good Friday : God has been murdered

And who has been murdered?
[...]
Now in the middle of the street,
and in the middle of the city,
in the middle of the day before the public gaze,
the unjust murder of a just man has taken place.

And so he is lifted up on a tall tree,
and a placard is attached to show who has been murdered.
Who is it? To say is hard and not to say yet more fearful.
Listen then, shuddering at him through whom the earth shook.


He who hung the earth is hanging.
He who fixed the heavens in place has been fixed in place.
He who laid the foundations of the universe has been laid on a tree.
The master has been profaned.
God has been murdered.
[...]
and the day was turned to darkness.

--Melito of Sardis

Good Friday : Christ on the Cross ... Some Thoughts

The entire life of Christ is with a view to "his hour." The hour of Jesus is the hour when he fully accomplishes his mission, which is to glorify the Father and save us. It is for this reason that he came. "Behold why I have come to this hour, Father, glorify your name." (John 12:27-28) "Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that your Son might glorify you." He came to glorify the Father and to save us. It is the mystery of the Cross which unites this contemplative gaze (glorifying the Father) with the apostolic work par excellence (saving us). It is the will of the Father that this be realized by means of the suffering of the Cross, and the suffering of the Agony where there is sadness (there is no true suffering without the interior sadness of the soul, Therese tells us), sadness such that Jesus could have died from it, "My soul is sad to the point of death." This sadness-- which takes hold of Christ's entire soul-is sadness caused by the weight of sin, by the horror of sin whereby man turns from God and turns in on himself: the sin of personal pride and/or the sin of collective pride (symbolized by the tower of Babel). The mystery of the Cross begins with the Agony and continues to Golgotha. Between the two there is the scourging at the pillar, the carrying of the cross, and the various forms of suffering that Jesus experienced because of the Crucifixion.

Why did God, in his wisdom, wish to unite, in the mystery of the Cross, love in its greatest, most powerful and purest aspect with suffering, with sadness? It is because of the wisdom of the Cross that the Little Flower [St. Therese] unites so closely and constantly love and suffering in an extremely practical and simple fashion. ... Why does the Father--who sends his Son to glorify and save us--establish a connection between love and suffering, extreme suffering, that is, suffering which leads to and implies death. Why does the Father unite love and the deadly sadness of the Agony? Why is this? It would have been more normal to unite love with joy, with success. Jesus would have been capable of succeeding. He would have been able to bring salvation to humanity with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, or with the amazing procession shown in Chapter six of John's gospel, when Jesus is followed by a crowd of 5,000 men, not including the women and children. Salvation could have been given there. Indeed, none of these things are extrinsic to salvation, but they are not Jesus' "hour," the moment for which he came. His hour is an act of love realized by means of the sadness of the Agony, the suffering of the Cross and the offering of his earthly life, in obedience to the Father.

Let us understand that the Cross, with all the suffering it entails, is a passage whose end is joy. Its end is not sadness, its end is not suffering (that is why suffering does not finalize). Its end is love that blossoms in joy. This blossoming is the mystery of the Resurrection. "If Christ is not risen, vain is our faith" (1 Cor. 15:17). Exteriorly, the Cross is a failure, the most horrible failure that ever existed on earth: amongst the 12 disciples of Jesus there is a traitor, one whom Jesus chose to be his successor who betrays him, and the others flee...save one. Only one of 12, John, is present at the Cross. What would be said of a Novice Master who had formed 12 novices amongst whom only one remained faithful? We would pity him: "Poor novice master. What an idiot; he understood nothing." Exteriorly, the Cross is a horrible failure, and the devil is convinced it is his great victory. In reality, the Cross is the victory of love, a hidden victory: the grain of wheat must fall to the earth to bear much fruit. Here, one touches the fruitfulness of love-- not only love, but the fruitfulness of love. So that there be this fruitfulness of love, we must pass through the Cross, a difficult passage which Jesus indicates for us, but only a passage, whose end is the Resurrection.

--Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe, OP

Good Friday : Stabat Mater

At the Cross her station keeping,
stood the mournful Mother weeping,
close to Jesus to the last.

Through her heart, His sorrow sharing,
all His bitter anguish bearing,
now at length the sword has passed.

O how sad and sore distressed
was that Mother, highly blest,
of the sole-begotten One.

Christ above in torment hangs,
she beneath beholds the pangs
of her dying glorious Son.

Is there one who would not weep,
whelmed in miseries so deep,
Christ's dear Mother to behold?

Can the human heart refrain
from partaking in her pain,
in that Mother's pain untold?

Bruised, derided, cursed, defiled,
she beheld her tender Child
All with scourges rent:

For the sins of His own nation,
saw Him hang in desolation,
Till His spirit forth He sent.

O thou Mother! fount of love!
Touch my spirit from above,
make my heart with thine accord:

Make me feel as thou hast felt;
make my soul to glow and melt
with the love of Christ my Lord.

Holy Mother! pierce me through,
in my heart each wound renew
of my Savior crucified:

Let me share with thee His pain,
who for all my sins was slain,
who for me in torments died.

Let me mingle tears with thee,
mourning Him who mourned for me,
all the days that I may live:

By the Cross with thee to stay,
there with thee to weep and pray,
is all I ask of thee to give.

Virgin of all virgins blest!,
Listen to my fond request:
let me share thy grief divine;

Let me, to my latest breath,
in my body bear the death
of that dying Son of thine.

Wounded with His every wound,
steep my soul till it hath swooned,
in His very Blood away;

Be to me, O Virgin, nigh,
lest in flames I burn and die,
in His awful Judgment Day.

Christ, when Thou shalt call me hence,
by Thy Mother my defense,
by Thy Cross my victory;

When my body dies,
let my soul be granted
the glory of Paradise. Amen.

Good Friday : "Woman, Behold, Your Son"

We must constantly return to this last gaze that Jesus fixes upon Mary, His Mother. The Infant Jesus' first gaze upon His Mother remains in silence. The Infant Jesus' first smile for His Mother existed, yet we know nothing about it. What the Gospel does give us is this last look which is doubtless accompanied by a smile, the smile of Christ Crucified, wherein Jesus conveys all His love, looking at Mary and saying to her: "Woman." Under the motion of the Holy Spirit, we must hold this name in great esteem. We must not become accustomed to it. Rather, we must see what is so astonishing in it. This final gaze of a beloved son upon his mother--especially when that Beloved Son is God!--consists in His calling her: "Woman."

Let us understand that Christ is not using this term in the sense that is generally used when referring to "man" or "woman." It is much deeper. Is it true that Christ uses the conventional term. Perhaps this is precisely becaue Mary at the Cross is the Woman par excellence. She is the Woman as God has seen her in all her strength, the Woman par excellence. She is the New Woman, entirely relative to Jesus in His Mystery par excellence: the mystery of the Cross. She is the one who suffers with Jesus. She is the one who lives the same mystery that Jesus lives, who lives it with Him. She is so closely united with the Heart of Jesus that she endures everything He endures at the Cross, with and in Him. They are "one" as Jesus is "one" with the Father. We can say that Mary is "one" with Jesus at the Cross and that she brings to completion what is lacking in His Passion. [Cf. Col. 1:24] Of course, nothing is lacking as far as intensity of love is concerned; however, there is a lack as far as extension is concerned. And it is the proper role of woman to enable love to assume everything. This is perhaps the mystery of woman: to enable love to take hold of everything--that is, body and sensitivity, intelligence and will--and to render this love fruitful, to allow this love to become the source of another love, another life. Perhaps this is the ultimate secret.

--Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe, OP

Stealing Heaven : Christ and the Two Thieves

The good thief is a found sheep. ...

The one thief joined in the mockery with cutting scorn born of his own desperate plight. "Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!" Luke tells us that he "railed" against Jesus. ... In his dying he turned, and it seems he turned definitively, against the light.

Not so with the other one. The other thief rebuked the first, we are told. "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly; for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong." Painfully twisting his neck, he looked toward Jesus. "Jesus," he said, "remember me when you come into your kingdom." And Jesus said to him, "Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise." In his dying, the second thief turned toward the light.

--Fr. Richard John Neuhaus

On the Cross : Dictations from a State of "Hell"

The wages of sin is death. The death on the Cross now represents this wage. Death is the reward and result of my sin. Every sin leads to death. But who will see the connection? Who has any idea how much of what is positive is destroyed in men through sin? ...

[Stretching out her arms] Now the crown of thorns is put in place; now the nails are hammered in, and with every blow sins are hammered into the soul and body of the Lord. The crown is formed from existing sins, those I intend to commit or those I am not finished with. The nails are formed of those of the past, the forgotten ones, those one no longer wishes to acknowledge or remember. [Sighing] Ah, and he made up for it all. For everything, everything. For everyone.

When the nails penetrate, they burst into the body of Christ all at once. Imagine that all the sins of my whole life, even those of mere thought, become present and penetrate into me through my hands and feet. They penetrate through an unimaginiable painful recognition. And the sins of the crown do no penetrate but make their mark. And the more painful it is and the more tired one is, so much the more still follows after. Don't you see it?

This monstrous shame. Now one has to receive for every sin the wage that is called death. Imagine someone who would want to make reparation in his living flesh for everything, for example, for every murder. Every murderous intention as well. He would become mincemeat. Even taking on just one small category of sin would already be totally unthinkable. But the Lord bears all sins and, so, all the kinds of death one could think of. And he bears it not as victim, as blows from without; he does not merely offer his body but hands over his whole being. He bears every sin from within as if he himself had committed it, with all its shame. A shame that now does not admit of repentance. Repentance and confession belong together in a unity that originates from the Cross, beyond the Cross. On the Cross, the Lord only reaches the insight into the heinousness of sin.

This Son who has handed over his divinity, his whole spirit to the Father, in order to be only man, is that man who lived without experiencing sin otherwise than in others. But because he now wants to be only the Son of Man, the exemplar of man, he has to experience every sin in the same way men would if ...

There is nothing ever so intimate that does not now undergo profanation. Every possible form of love is wounded in every possible way. And the Son has here to discover himself with his pure soul: in the midst of the most secret malice. As if someone finds himself doing what he had sworn to himself he would never do. The Son feels the same abhorrence for every sin, but he does not repel it as something foreign; he allows it to settle on himself. There is no way of deadening the impact. One sin more or less does not matter to a sinner; he would not mind taking on one for another person occasionally. His conscience is blunted. But the Lord feels every sin with his whole soul and body. In his death he dies all deaths. He leaves no sin behind as something finished with. Each one causes his death. The sin that is intended, the sin that is willed, the sin committed, everything always up to the limit where repentance begins, up to total abhorrence. And by going the way of terrible, perfect recognition (by means of his purity) he opens for us the way to repentance and confession. He himself is now unable to confess; he has no time left. Everything clashes so monstrously together that in grasping one thing, he always grasps everything else with it.

And all this in obedience! What can that mean: "Into your hands I commend my spirit"? ... There are still more parts that have to die ... I thirst. ... Adieu.

--Adrienne von Speyr

Good Friday : Crushed by Eros

Like a blacksmith the Love God has hammered me and crushed me

on his anvil, and has plunged me in a winter torrent.

--Anacreon

The Eucharist : The Silent Touch

"On Charon's Wharf":

[M]y belief in the sacrament of the Eucharist is simple: without touch, God is a monologue, an idea, a philosophy; he must touch and be touched, the tongue on flesh, and that touch is the result of the monologues, the idea, the philosophies which led to faith; but in the instant of the touch there is no place for thinking, for talking; the silent touch affirms all that, and goes deeper: it affirms the mysteries of love and mortality.

--Andre Dubus, from Broken Vessels

Lent : Stabat Mater 3

Lent : Stabat Mater 2

Lent : Stabat Mater 1

Lent & Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) : The Desert a Place of Grace

The desert is the place of silence, of solitude; it is the absence of the exchanges of daily life, its noise and its superficiality. The desert is the place of the absolute, the place of freedom, which sets us before the ultimate demands. Not by chance is the desert the place where monotheism began. In that sense it is a place of grace. In putting aside all preoccupations we encounter our Creator.

Great things have their beginnings in the desert, in silence, in poverty. It is not possible to share in the mission of Jesus, in the mission of the Gospel, without sharing in the desert experience, its poverty, its hunger. That beautiful hunger for justice of which the Lord speaks in the Sermon on the Mount cannot be born in the fulness of satiety... And let us not forget that for Jesus the desert did not end with those forty days. His final, extreme, desert was to be that of Psalm 21: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" And from that desert sprang up the waters of the life of the world.

--Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Journey towards Easter (14) re-published as Journey to Easter

Lent : Fr. Philippe and the Cross as Passage to the Resurrection

The entire life of Christ is with a view to "his hour." The hour of Jesus is the hour when he fully accomplishes his mission, which is to glorify the Father and save us. It is for this reason that he came. "Behold why I have come to this hour, Father, glorify your name." (John 12:27-28) "Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that your Son might glorify you." He came to glorify the Father and to save us. It is the mystery of the Cross which unites this contemplative gaze (glorifying the Father) with the apostolic work par excellence (saving us). It is the will of the Father that this be realized by means of the suffering of the Cross, and the suffering of the Agony where there is sadness (there is no true suffering without the interior sadness of the soul, Therese tells us), sadness such that Jesus could have died from it, "My soul is sad to the point of death." This sadness-- which takes hold of Christ's entire soul-is sadness caused by the weight of sin, by the horror of sin whereby man turns from God and turns in on himself: the sin of personal pride and/or the sin of collective pride (symbolized by the tower of Babel). The mystery of the Cross begins with the Agony and continues to Golgotha. Between the two there is the scourging at the pillar, the carrying of the cross, and the various forms of suffering that Jesus experienced because of the Crucifixion.

Why did God, in his wisdom, wish to unite, in the mystery of the Cross, love in its greatest, most powerful and purest aspect with suffering, with sadness? It is because of the wisdom of the Cross that the Little Flower [St. Therese] unites so closely and constantly love and suffering in an extremely practical and simple fashion. ... Why does the Father--who sends his Son to glorify and save us--establish a connection between love and suffering, extreme suffering, that is, suffering which leads to and implies death. Why does the Father unite love and the deadly sadness of the Agony? Why is this? It would have been more normal to unite love with joy, with success. Jesus would have been capable of succeeding. He would have been able to bring salvation to humanity with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, or with the amazing procession shown in Chapter six of John's gospel, when Jesus is followed by a crowd of 5,000 men, not including the women and children. Salvation could have been given there. Indeed, none of these things are extrinsic to salvation, but they are not Jesus' "hour," the moment for which he came. His hour is an act of love realized by means of the sadness of the Agony, the suffering of the Cross and the offering of his earthly life, in obedience to the Father.

Let us understand that the Cross, with all the suffering it entails, is a passage whose end is joy. Its end is not sadness, its end is not suffering (that is why suffering does not finalize). Its end is love that blossoms in joy. This blossoming is the mystery of the Resurrection. "If Christ is not risen, vain is our faith" (1 Cor. 15:17). Exteriorly, the Cross is a failure, the most horrible failure that ever existed on earth: amongst the 12 disciples of Jesus there is a traitor, one whom Jesus chose to be his successor who betrays him, and the others flee...save one. Only one of 12, John, is present at the Cross. What would be said of a Novice Master who had formed 12 novices amongst whom only one remained faithful? We would pity him: "Poor novice master. What an idiot; he understood nothing." Exteriorly, the Cross is a horrible failure, and the devil is convinced it is his great victory. In reality, the Cross is the victory of love, a hidden victory: the grain of wheat must fall to the earth to bear much fruit. Here, one touches the fruitfulness of love-- not only love, but the fruitfulness of love. So that there be this fruitfulness of love, we must pass through the Cross, a difficult passage which Jesus indicates for us, but only a passage, whose end is the Resurrection.

--Fr. Marie-Dominique Philippe, OP

Lent : Kneeling before the Lord

I know many words, O men, but today you must kneel--
Your knees are your wings.

--Gertrud von Le Fort, Hymns to the Church (50)

A leper comes to Jesus and begs him for help. He falls to his knees before him and says: "If you will, you can make me clean." (Mark 1.40)

The bodily gesture itself is the bearer of the spiritual meaning, which is precisely that of worship. Without the worship, the bodily gesture would be meaningless, while the spiritual act must of its very nature, because of the psychosomatic unity of man, express itself in the bodily gesture. The two aspects are united in the one word, because in a very profound way they belong together. When kneeling becomes merely external, a merely physical act, it becomes meaningless.

On the other hand, when someone tries to take worship back into the purely spiritual realm and refuses to give it embodied form, the act of worship evaporates, for what is purely spiritual is inappropriate to the nature of man. Worship is one of those fundamental acts that affect the whole man. That is why bending the knee before the presence of the living God is something we cannot abandon.

Again, there is a story that comes from the sayings of the Desert Fathers, according to which the devil was compelled by God to show himself to a certain Abba Apollo. He looked black and ugly, with frighteningly thin limbs, but most strikingly, he had no knees. The inability to kneel is seen as the very essence of the diabolical.

--Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), The Spirit of the Liturgy (189-93)

I [...] fell upon my knees and spread out my hands to the Lord my God.

--Ezra 9.5

Annunciation : God became man ...

"God became man so that man might become god." --St. Athanasius

Lent : Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity

I still remember the first secret you shared with me at Gemeaux, you were very little, but already the Master had taken your little heart captive, and my soul felt drawn toward yours! ... A Carmelite, my darling, is a soul who has gazed on the Crucified, who has seen Him offering Himself to His Father as a Victim for souls and, recollecting herself in this great vision of the charity of Christ, has understood the passionate love of His soul, and has wanted to give herself as He did! ... And on the mountain of Carmel, in silence, in solitude, in prayer that never ends, for it continues through everything, the Carmelite already lives as if in Heaven: "by God alone." The same One who will one day be her beatitude and will fully satisfy her in glory is already giving Himself to her. He never leaves her, He dwells within her soul; more than that, the two of them are but one. So she hungers for silence that she may always listen, penetrate ever deeper into His infinite Being. She is identified with Him whom she loves, she finds Him everywhere, she sees Him shining through all things! Is this not Heaven on earth! You carry this Heaven within your soul, my little Germaine, you can be a Carmelite already, for Jesus recognizes the Carmelite from within, by her soul. Don't ever leave Him, do everything beneath His divine gaze, and remain wholly joyful in His peace and love, making those around you happy!

--Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity

St. Joseph

Suspending our Lenten observations, this is how we spent our St. Joseph Day:

Lent and Matthew the Poor : Finding Comfort in the Good Samaritan

"The penitent is described by Christ as a stranger who has fallen into the hands of robbers in a foreign country. They strip him of his clothes, rob him, humiliate him, wound him, and leave him more dead than alive. The penitent is like a man stripped of the garment of his honor by the devil, whose will has therefore been stripped naked and whose members have been defiled. The devil robs him of his treasure--the treasure being the sanity of the mind, the light of insight, and the action of conscience--his person being humiliated, his fall disclosed, and his will shattered. Last of all, he wounds him deeply with lust to draw off his life quickly. At the end he leaves him a dead corpse unable to live! It is thus that the good Samaritan finds no occasion to ask questions or time to reproach, but immediately gathers him in his arms.


"The good Samaritan in the parable (Lk. 10.30-37) is Christ, and our interpretation hits the mark exactly, for He does not upbraid him or ask him to perform any action, but comes to him personally where he fell and stoops over him with His affection, washes and dresses his wound by His own wound, stops his bleeding by His own bleeding, and pours upon him the oil of His compassion and of His life, carrying him on the arms of His mercy, offering him a ride to the inn of His Church, asking His angels to serve him, and expending His grace on him till he recovers.

"Such is the penitent, a wretched man that has fallen on the way after being attacked by the oppression of man and the spite of the devil, and no longer able to do anything. After his strength has been drawn off, he finds room at the house of the Benign, room in His heart, room between His arms, on His beasts of burden, and in His Kingdom."

--Abouna Matta al-Meskeen (Matthew the Poor), "Repentance," Communion of Love (98)

Lent : Practice in Silence

A life properly lived includes practice in silence. This begins with keeping our mouth shut whenever this is required by the confidence of another person, the duties of our vocation, tact, or respect for others. It goes on to include keeping silence at times even when it might be permissible to speak, especially if speaking would create an impression. Not to speak at such times is a good exercise in keeping our mastery over the inordinate desire to talk. We should strive to conquer the mania for constant chatter and idle talk. How many superfluous things we say in the course of the day--how many foolish things! We must learn that silence is beautiful, that it is not emptiness, but true and full life.

--Romano Guardini

Lent and Leiva-Merikakis : Repentant Tears and Grasping the Incarnation

Tears are a mystical indication of true joy, as the Lord showed when He said, "Blessed are you that weep now, for you shall laugh."

Tears that spring from hope are part of the mystery of repentance; they are evidence that the penitent has entered into grace and a secret sign that the state of true joy has been attained.

[...] Tears are a clear sign of the process of inner change and also evidence of the truth and power of the mystery of repentance.

--Matta al-Meskeen (Matthew the Poor), Communion of Love, 88

One of the Pharisees asked [Jesus] to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat at table. And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was sitting at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears, and wiped them with the hair of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. [...]

Then turning toward the woman he said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I entered your house, you gave me no water for my feet, but she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not ceased to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much [...].

--Luke 7.36-50

Jesus' mere presence in the town mysteriously draws the sinful woman to him, magnet-like, and how different are her motivations from those of the hypocritical Pharisee! While Simon wants to use Jesus to enhance his own public image as a pious and holy man, the woman for her part feels that the simple presence of Jesus' holiness in her proximity is an instant judgment that reveals all the ugliness of her sins. How truthful and bold she is in her self-appraisal! But, instead of going to hide like Adam and Eve at feeling so shamefully naked before the glance of the Son of God, penetrating miraculously through all the walls of the town to arrive at her own heart, what does she do?

[...] In one moment of luminous intuition, this woman realizes that Jesus is at once the destroyer of her sins, the victor over all evil, and the Bridegroom of her soul.

--Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, The Way of the Disciple, 89-90

Thus leaving her to say:

It is you, my Lord, who desired that we should grasp you and implore you. For, if you had not wanted us to grasp you, you would not have become incarnate. It is you who called me to come near you. I saw your beauty and ran toward you.

--Syriac Liturgy for the Feast of Saint Mary Magdalen (quoted in Leiva above, 90)

How impressive this woman who, despite the great emotions shaking her soul, does not utter a single word throughout the episode. Instead, she makes herself present to Jesus [...]. All the verbal dialogue takes place between Jesus and the Pharisee; what transpires between Jesus and the woman is the mute dialogue of love, in which only the gestures of the body and the expression of the eyes can communicate what is happening in the soul. Deep and overwhelming love is beyond words and arguments, beyond reason. The Pharisee's words have the effect of separating him from Jesus, of keeping Jesus far from his soul, while the woman's silence unites her to Jesus as the surest bridge and bond. She has understood the full meaning of the injunction, "Be still, and know that I am God!" (Ps. 46.10)

--Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, The Way of the Disciple, 90-91

Truly, she has understood:

For, if you had not wanted us to grasp you, you would not have become incarnate. It is you who called me to come near you. I saw your beauty and ran toward you.

Lent and Corbon : Kenosis of the Cross

In the kenosis of the Incarnation grace dawned; in the kenosis of the Cross it shines forth where the darkness is thickest. After all, when day dawns, what happens? Night is scattered. Night was simply an absence; it had no existence in itself; [...] and consequently when it is there nothing exists for anyone; people do not even recognize each other. Night as such is empty of meaning and strips everything else of meaning. Well, at the core of every human event, at the bottom of every human heart, there is a night of death and rupture, of nonmeaning and absence. "Flesh and blood", or mere human nature (Jn 1.13; 1 Cor 15.50), cannot dissipate this night; nothing outside man can introduce light into that blackness. It reigns in the heart and from that vantage point spreads its veil over everything, from the depths of the person to its most conscious structures. Only he who is Light can assume the human without damaging any part of it. And only this Man-God, in whom death finds no complicity with itself, can enter into the thickest darkness of death; that is what happens in the kenosis of the Cross.

[...] Did the executioners realize what they were doing when they raised the Lord of glory on his Cross? What happened when the Light was immersed in this darkness? Not a romantic dawn, but a struggle, the combat that decided the salvation of all men. Death feeds on lies and engenders lies; it feeds upon appearances and leaves emptiness behind it. Here, at the ninth hour, the hour when darkness reigns (Lk 22.53), death seizes its prey--only to be throttled by him whom it expects to swallow up. It is "gripped by terror", for he who enters into it is not mortal because caught in the nets of sin, but mortal out of love, mortal by grace and truth. Death has been deceived; its lies have been turned back upon it. When truth shines forth, all lying is shown up for what it is and is scattered like the night before the dawning day. Death is no longer: the Son of the Living God has crushed it by his own death.

--Fr. Jean Corbon, OP

Lent : Temptation and the Will

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast.

--Gen 3.1

Temptation properly so-called is rarely the exclusive work of the devil. Ordinarily he uses his knowledge of the dominant tendencies of a soul and his power over the senses in order to make an image more enticing, to stir up an impression, to intensify a pleasure, to quicken thus a desire, or make a solicitation more attractive and more actual, so that it will invade the field of conscience and win the consent of the will.

--Fr. Marie-Eugene of the Child-Jesus, OCD

This kind can be cast out in no way except by prayer and fasting.

--Mark 9.28

Lent : Matthew the Poor & the Deep Meaning of Fasting

If we eat of a sacrificed body and do not sacrifice our own selves, how can we claim that a union takes place?

--Abouna Matta al-Meskeen (Matthew the Poor)

Fr. Matthew the Poor was a Coptic monk who affected the lives of many, both Coptic and non-Coptic Christians, especially Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, who writes that Father Matthew the Poor is "[o]ne of the great spiritual masters of our time." (201)

Well, one of the first writings I read from him is on fasting and it is in his book Communion of Love. This chapter, "The Deep Meaning of Fasting," can also be found here. Some selections from throughout the chapter:

Fasting, in the life and works of Christ, ranks as the first response to the act of unction and of being filled with the Holy Spirit. It represents the first battle in which Christ did away with His adversary, the prince of hte world. [...] For when a person enters into prayerful fasting, Satan departs from the flesh.

Fasting was to elevate the flesh to the level of war with the spirits of evil, those powers that hold sway over our weaker part, the flesh.

[B]aptism, being filled with the Holy Spirit, and fasting form a fundamental and inseparable series of acts in Christ’s life that culminated in perfect victory over Satan in preparation for his total annihilation by the cross.

The ultimate aim of [...] fasting is that Christ Himself may dwell in us: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Ga. 2:20).

[F]asting is a divine act of life.

[F]asting is an extremely important stage between baptism and crucifixion. [...] He [Christ] thus raised the flesh to the stage of the cross.

He invites us to a total communion with Him in suffering and glory alike. We thus have to prove our communion with Him in faith by having communion with Him in His works; only works testify to the genuineness of our faith. Yet He, as a true Bridegroom, did not leave us to invent works for ourselves but laid down the course of our works and life: ‘I am the way.”

Fasting is a test in which the personality defies the self. [...] Fasting may therefore be considered an act of love of the highest order, a physical way of entering into the experience of the cross.

You know that the effort of fasting is felt primarily by the body, which is the physical area that contains the self where it reveals its nature and desires. Thus, when we fast we exhaust the body, and so, indirectly, subdue the self.(3) If we subdue the self through the subjugation of the body, we have in fact come close to the destruction of the self, at least partially. So it is that by fasting we fulfill the word of the Lord: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Lk. 9:24).

As for the Lord Jesus, He fasted not to receive something but to make a free offering of Himself in an act of will and to manifest the coming sacrifice of the cross.

As for us, we fast not to receive anything or to offer anything, for we have received Christ, and in Him we have already received everything before we fast. In Him we receive everything even before we are born. No offering of ours, even if we go to our death, is of any avail in removing a single sin.

We fast and offer our bodies as a sacrifice; the outward form of this is bearing fatigue, but its essence is the intentional acceptance of death, that we may be counted fit to be mystically united in the flesh and blood of Christ. It is then that we become, in Christ’s sacrifice, a pure sacrifice, capable of interceding and redeeming.

Fasting [...] has to be consummated in Communion, partaking in the pure body and blood, to become a perfect sacrifice, efficacious in prayer and intercession. Every Holy Communion Has to be preceded by fasting, and every fast has to end with Holy Communion.

If we eat of a sacrificed body and do not sacrifice our own selves, how can we claim that a union takes place?

Whenever we eat of the body and drink of the blood, we are mystically prepared for preaching the death of the Lord and confessing His resurrection. Every testimony to the death and resurrection of the Lord carries with it a readiness for martyrdom. And every martyrdom carries with it a resurrection.