God loves my story and God loves your story, not because our stories are perfect (they are not), but because they are our stories. And God loves us. It is in and through the stories of our lives that God meets us, and makes His home in our hearts, and saves us.
For many people, a pilgrimage is a time of renewal. Going to a specific, holy place, often walking more than usual, praying in a place that is made significant by who has been there and what has happened in the past, any one of these things would help us to reflect on our lives, and a pilgrimage usually has all of them. ...
Conversion, commission, and crucifixion initiated your Christian existence, your Franciscan vocation. In your Baptism you died to sin and self, you rose to God, to “newness of life.” At your profession you said—three times—this is what I want!
God’s mercy is manifest in the Church, being the fruit of the Paschal Mystery, preaching and confessing mercy, recalling it and imitating it, realizing it and making it present in the sacrament of salvation.
On this blessed day you and I thank God for the incredible grace to declare in the Sunday Creed: “On the third day He rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead.” Jesus is alive, alive in His humanity and in His divinity—the very same person who was born in Bethlehem, walked the dusty roads of Palestine, died in anguish on Calvary’s cross.
“O Sacred Banquet, in which Christ is received, the memory of His Passion is renewed, the mind is filled with grace, and the future pledge is given to us.” This Sunday of Passion we begin a whole week of gathering in prayer and liturgy to proclaim the mystery of our faith. The week of our Lord’s Passion begins with His triumphal entry into His holy city, Jerusalem. “We adore, You, O Christ, and we bless You, because by Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.”
Now is “the hour,” Jesus says. It is Passover. Jesus is the Lamb. He is speaking of His own sacrifice. It becomes more explicit in later verses, when, speaking again of His hour, Jesus says, “Now is My soul troubled. And what shall I say?” Father, save Me from this “hour?” No, for this purpose I have come to this “hour.” Father, glorify Your name.”
Whether we gaze with longing into the garden, or with fear and trembling into the desert, of this we can be sure—God walked there first.
The suffering of Christ on Calvary is at the heart of our faith. Why did Jesus suffer? How can I “proclaim Christ crucified” in ways that give hope? — that we have been redeemed through the passion of Christ.
May God strengthen us inwardly, that with the joy of the Holy Spirit, we may offer God something above the measure required of us. Amen.