Christ on a Donkey (Henri Nouwen)

    Christ on a Donkey, in the Augustiner Museum in Freiburg, is one of the most moving Christ figures I know… 

    Christ’s long, slender face with a high forehead, inward-looking eyes, long hair, and a small forked beard expresses the mystery of his suffering in a way that holds me spellbound. As he rides into Jerusalem surrounded by people shouting “hosanna,” “cutting branches from the trees and spreading them in his path” (Matt. 21:8), Jesus appears completely concentrated on something else. He does not look at the excited crowd. He does not wave. He sees beyond all the noise and movement to what is ahead of him: an agonizing journey of betrayal, torture, crucifixion, and death. His unfocused eyes see what nobody around him can see; his high forehead reflects a knowledge of things to come far beyond anyone’s understanding. There is melancholy, but also peaceful acceptance. There is insight into the fickleness of the human heart, but also immense compassion. There is deep awareness of the unspeakable pain to be suffered, but also a strong determination to do God’s will. Above all, there is love, an endless, deep, and far-reaching love born from an unbreakable intimacy with God and reaching out to all people, wherever they are, were, or will be. There is nobody whom he does not fully love. 

    Every time I look at this Christ on the donkey, I am reminded again that I am seen by him with all my sins, guilt, and shame and loved with all his forgiveness, mercy, and compassion. 

    Just being with him in the Augustiner Museum is a prayer. I look and look and look, and I know that he sees the depths of my heart; I do not have to be afraid. 

PRAYER 

 Almighty God,
today we pay homage to Christ in his victory.
With songs of praise
we accompany him into his holy city;
grant that we may come
 to the heavenly Jerusalem through him
who lives and reigns with you to all eternity. 

--Henri Nouwen

Image source: Christus auf dem Palmesel, Upper Rhine (1350-1360). For this and a further collection of Palmesel, go to:  https://artandtheology.org/2026/03/13/the-palmesel-palm-donkey-a-holy-week-tradition-from-medieval-germany/
Quotation source

Choosing love (Elizabeth Scalia)

   Choosing love in any given moment requires a consciousness of Christ as being continually before one’s eyes, and a conscientiousness of service-as-love for the sake of being united to the vast ocean of mercy that helps to heal and sustain the world. 

--Elizabeth Scalia 

Image source: Fra Angelico, Deposition from the Cross, Pala di Santa Trinità (1432-1434), http://www.travelingintuscany.com/art/fraangelico/depositionfromthecross.htm
Quotation source

God is in the midst of you (St. Andrew of Crete)

  Behold, your king is coming to you, the Holy One, the Savior 

   Let us say to Christ: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, the king of Israel. Let us wave before him like palm branches the words inscribed above him on the cross. Let us show him honor, not with olive branches but with the splendor of merciful deeds to one another. Let us spread the thoughts and desires of our hearts under his feet like garments, so that entering with the whole of his being, he may draw the whole of our being into himself and place the whole of his in us. Let us say to Zion in the words of the prophet: Have courage, daughter of Zion, do not be afraid. Behold, your king comes to you, humble and mounted on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden. 

   He is coming who is everywhere present and pervades all things; he is coming to achieve in you his work of universal salvation. He is coming who came to call to repentance not the righteous but sinners, coming to recall those who have strayed into sin. Do not be afraid then: God is in the midst of you, and you shall not be shaken. 

--St. Andrew of Crete 

Image source: The Entry into Jerusalem, St. Seraphim of Sarov Orthodox Cathedral, Santa Rosa, CA, https://saintseraphim.com/
Quotation source

Sunday Gospel Reflection, March 29, 2026: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!

Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord…

Will we choose love? 

   When, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus enters into Jerusalem upon a simple beast of burden, he does so as a king who is meek and humble. For all that his procession is triumphal – Hosanna to the Son of David, the very large crowd shouts to honor him, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! – Jesus himself holds to the humility he embraced when, as the Letter to the Philippians tells us, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness. Emptying himself of all rights of divinity in order to be human, Jesus seeks not to control but to love humanity with a love that is merciful, that forgives, a love that includes even us. 

   And so, as Jesus enters into his Passion, though he may be degraded like the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, his back beaten, his beard plucked derisively, and also scoffed at and mocked, in fulfillment of Psalm 22, yet love is still at work. Jesus has benefitted from many gifts; he knows how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them, and he knows how to listen, ears open, that he might hear all that God expects of him. Like the Suffering Servant, Jesus has confidence in the ability of God’s love to transcend all things… even the worst that we as human beings can come up with. 

   Thus, even from the Cross, Jesus remains a witness to God’s love, enduring the torture and pain out of love for humankind, love even for those who are visiting pain upon him, love even for those close friends who betray him, as all do, one after another. Judas never sees that Jesus’ love is greater than his own betrayal of his Master. Yet, at the Last Supper, Jesus’ disciples all drink of his forgiveness and mercy and love, taking that love into themselves, preparing to bring his love to the world. We do the same in Eucharist, participating in his sacrifice, that we too – though we sin – might know God’s deep and abiding love for us, and bring it to bear upon our world. In the midst of pain, Jesus chooses love. Will we?

This post is based on Fr. Pat’s Scripture class.
Image source: www.wordclouds.com

Am I ready to surrender? (OLMC Reflection)

   Thy will be done. How many times have we uttered that line of the Our Father in prayer? 

   Thy will be done. This is Jesus’ prayer during his agony in the garden in Luke’s Gospel. Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done. Jesus has known from the beginning of time that God would send him to save humanity. And yet at his hour of agony, Jesus must choose to fulfill his Father’s will, to offer his own body for our salvation. Or, as Fr. Patrick Michaels once said, Jesus took on our humanity so that, through humanity, he could save humanity. 

   In the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is quoted as having said, Behold, I come to do your will, O God. I come to do your will. The passage describes the Incarnation, Jesus’ yes to the Father’s invitation to death: When Christ came into the world, he said, Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me. I come to do your will. Jesus empties himself of his own will, that he might do the will of his Father. 

   Today is the Feast of the Annunciation; it might also be called the Feast of the Conception & Incarnation of Jesus. As the angel departs, the Holy Spirit comes upon Mary, and Jesus is conceived – wow! Bishop Barron says that, recognizing the divine in her midst, at that crucial moment, Mary allows herself to fall in love with God, and in that moment of ecstasy, the Son of God enters the world for its salvation. What makes this possible? 

   Dr. Wendy Wright has written that, on the one hand, Jesus’ Incarnation was divinity’s ecstatic, kenotic gesture of love, a wooing of mankind. But Mary’s yes was also ecstatic. It was both a passionate response and a self-emptying. It took her out of herself; she gave herself to and became inhabited by the one she loved. Mary’s own receptivity to grace allows her to accept the Father’s will, no matter the cost. In spite of what must have been tremendous uncertainty, even bafflement, Mary says, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your will. 

   May it be done to me according to your will… or, Thy will be done. Because of her self-emptying selflessness, Mary’s tiny womb was filled with infinite divinity; her humanity was the portal through which divinity could take on human flesh. 

   This story resonates with me in so many ways, and prompts so many hard questions. For starters, Mary trusted her experience of the divine. Do I? How am I remaining open to the movement of the Spirit in my life? And, maybe most importantly: Am I aware of God’s desire to be born in me, daily? 

   Because if I am, then, boy, do I have work to do! Look at King Ahaz. God invites Ahaz to ask for a sign; God wants Ahaz to allow God to work in his midst. But Ahaz does not say yes to God: I will not ask! Unlike Ahaz, Mary allows nothing to get in the way of the divine taking root in her. Unlike Ahaz, Mary surrenders any control she might have to God’s will for her. 

   Am I ready to do that? Am I ready to surrender all that stuff I’m holding onto, all the negativity and brokenness and sin, so that my body might have room for the Lord to grow in me? 

   Am I ready to let go of my deep-held resentments and open my heart to God? 

   Am I ready to give up my obsessive-compulsive need for control and allow God to work in me? 

   Am I ready to shut down the clock of my impatience, and be attentive to those I love? 

   Am I ready to close my judgmental eyes and see others with the eyes of my heart? 

   Am I ready to sacrifice, if not myself, then my self-focus, for the sake of others? 

   Am I ready to choose to empty myself and serve in the way God wants me to serve? 

   St. Ambrose once wrote, If there is only one Mother of Christ according to the flesh, all are begetting Christ according to the faith. Eight hundred years later, Meister Eckhart added, What good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? 

   Mary’s own humanity afforded the Son of God the human component of his identity; through her womb, Christ took on flesh, became incarnate, to save all of humanity. The Feast of the Annunciation, Conception & Incarnation invites us to do the same: to allow the Lord to take on flesh through us, his Body on earth, to be his love and mercy and justice and compassion in ways that are tangible, real. 

   Here I am, Lord. I come to do your will. Thy will be done. 

   This Lent, I pray, O Lord, help us learn to surrender all, to empty ourselves completely, as both Jesus and Mary did, that we might choose freely and openly to do your will, that your divinity might be born in us, and through us, heal your world! 

--Suzanne,
OLMC Communion Service Reflection,
March 25, 2025

Happy Solemnity of the Annunciation!

Image source 1: Róisín Dowd Murphy of Murphy-Devitt Studios, The Annunciation, Corpus Christi Church, Drumcondra, Dublin., c.1978–85, https://corpuschristidrumcondra.ie/

Image source 2: John Collier, Annunciation, Church of Saint Gabriel, McKinney, Texas, https://cultivatingoakspress.com/to-make-visible/

Free me (Andy Otto)

Lord God, 

You give me the gift of freedom,
guiding me to a life of joy,
calling me to be my truest self.
As you freed Lazarus from the
burial clothes, and gave sight to
the blind, and called the rich
man to detachment, free me
from the unfreedoms that pile
up, which blockade me from the
life-giving joy you have for me.
Remove those things which
hinder my life with you.
I can freely choose this.
And I do. 

Amen. 

--Andy Otto,
Loyola Institute for Spirituality

Image source: Sadao Watanabe, The Raising of Lazarus (1967), http://portlandartmuseum.us/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=45032;type=101#
Quotation source

Jesus is on his way to the tombs (Joann Melina)

 
     This resurrection hope in the life-giving power of God is not just something for us to say we believe, but it must be encountered and experienced – and it only comes to us who are at the tomb. We must be willing to acknowledge our suffering, and the suffering of the world, and open ourselves up to God's Spirit at work. 

    It is not enough for us to shake our heads at injustice, tweet out thoughts and prayers, and then change the channel and keep our peace, hoping that someday Jesus will work it all out. Our faith demands our transformation, and our courageous and prayerful action. As Christians we have to disrupt the whole system of unnatural death which is bearing down upon the most marginalized, poor, and vulnerable. We have to act prophetically against the forces of death in our families, workplaces, community. Life has to break in through our economic choices, our advocacy, our votes, our relationships, and yes, through our prayers. We have to embody the truth that St. Paul shares: that the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead is with us, animating the Church. God is drawing near. We believe, yes, that eventually, in the fullness of God’s time all oppression will cease, and death will be no more. Until that time we must be instruments of God’s life, enfleshing hope and proclaiming today that death cannot have the last word. 

    The truth is that here and now, Jesus is on the way to the tombs of the ones he calls beloved, and he is asking us if we know the way and if we will go with him. Do we grieve with those who grieve, do we live in solidarity with those who are despised, disposable, and put to death in our world? Do we cry out to God for help? Do we know the stench of the tomb, like Martha and Mary did, because we are siblings of those who suffer? 

--Joann Melina 

Image source: https://abcnews.com/US/faith-leaders-blocked-ice-delivering-communion-immigrants-speak/story?id=127148684
Quotation source & full article