Our Savior's Passion (St. Maximus of Turin)

   Our Savior’s passion raises men and women from the depths, lifts them up from the earth, and sets them in the heights. 

--St. Maximus of Turin

 

Image source 1: Passion Façade, Sagrada Familia, Barcelona, https://blog.sagradafamilia.org/en/divulgation/the-pediment-of-the-passion-facade-jesus-victory-over-death/  Image source 2:  View inside the Sagrada Familia, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-tortured-136-year-history-building-gaudis-sagrada-familia

Were you there? (Davóne Tines)

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb? 

To hear the remarkable bass-baritone Davóne Tines sing Were You There, click on the video below: 

Image source: Julia Stankova, Women at the Cross, https://ancientanswers.org/2020/04/17/paradoxes-of-the-cross/
Video source

My God, my God, why have you deserted me? (Henri Nouwen)

   God is beyond, beyond our heart and mind, beyond our feelings and thoughts, beyond our expectations and desires, and beyond all the events and experiences that make up our life. Still God is in the center of all of it. Here we touch the heart of prayer, since here it becomes manifest that in prayer the distinction between God’s presence and God’s absence no longer really distinguishes. In prayer, God’s presence is never separated from God’s absence and God’s absence is never separated from God’s presence. God’s presence is so much beyond the human experience of being together that it quite easily is perceived as absence. God’s absence, on the other hand, is often so deeply felt that it leads to a new sense of God’s presence… 

   My God, my God, why have you deserted me? (Psalm 22:1)… When Jesus spoke these words on the cross, total aloneness and full acceptance touched each other. In that moment of complete emptiness all was fulfilled. In that hour of darkness new light was seen. While death was witnessed, life was affirmed. Where God’s absence was most loudly expressed, God’s presence was most profoundly revealed. When God, through the humanity of Jesus, freely chose to share our own most painful experience of divine absence, God became most present to us. It is into this mystery that we enter when we pray. 

--Henri Nouwen          

Image source: Victor Nuño, Good Friday / Viernes Santo, https://reknew.org/2013/05/does-jesus-abandonment-on-the-cross-destroy-the-trinity/ 

Quotation source

The experience of anguish (Sr. Bernadette Reis)

     I can connect most intimately with Jesus is through my own human experience. I do not know his experience. But I know my own. And that is where I can meet Jesus, who also went through the experience of anguish — whose sweat in the Garden of Gethsemane and the few words he managed to gasp out were the way he shared what he was going through with his father. Because Jesus, as God and man, experienced the gamut of human experience and emotion, I can meet him there. It is common ground. 

--Sr. Bernadette Reis, FSP

Image source: Luca Giordano, The Agony in the Garden. For a fascinating analysis of this painting by Fr. Blake Britton, visit https://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/beholding-beauty-giordanos-agony-in-the-garden/23466/ 

Quotation source

Deep joy in the touching of Jesus (Ann Voskamp)

    When service is unto people, the bones can grow weary, the frustration deep. Because, agrees Dorothy Sayers, whenever man is made the center of things, he becomes the storm-center of trouble. The moment you think of serving people, you begin to have a notion that other people owe you something for your pains ... You will begin to bargain for reward, to angle for applause...

    When the eyes of the heart focus on God, and the hands on always washing the feet of Jesus alone - the bones, they sing joy and the work returns to its purest state: eucharisteo. The work becomes worship, a liturgy of thankfulness. The work we do is only our love for Jesus in action, writes Mother Theresa.  If we pray the work... if we do it to Jesus, if we do it for Jesus, if we do it with Jesus ... that's what makes us content. 

    Deep joy is always in the touching of Christ - in whatever skin He comes to us in. 

--Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: 

 A Dare to Life Fully Right Where You Are 

Image source: Max Greiner, Divine Servant (Jesus Washes Peter’s Feet), sculpture, Witness Park, Pittsburg, Texas, https://notestowomen.wordpress.com/2019/04/18/true-greatness/

What was Judas inside of Christ? (James Miller)

It wasn’t for the money. 

Of that I’m sure 

the way cancer will take your donations, 

but they won’t buy its cure. 

No, he must have had the Judas cell. 

That hell in his heart and mind. 

A cell that keeps on hating 

until it kills the soul that keeps it. 

But what was Judas inside of Christ? 

Was he his coughs? 

His fevers? 

His flu? 

I think he was Christ’s nightmare. 

There in the garden 

when all the angels left, 

and from the dusk Judas came 

smiling like a breathing ghost. 

Yes, the dread of being kissed 

by the one who hates you most. 

--James Miller                        

Image: Jesus Carries Judas, capital, St. Marie-Madeleine (12th c.), Vezelay, France https://www.lastampa.it/vatican-insider/en/2016/06/18/news/the-good-shepherd-who-carries-judas-on-his-shoulders-1.34989269 

Poem source

The magnificence of Triduum!

   Have you been waiting patiently? It’s almost here! We are now in Holy Week, which culminates in the Easter Triduum – three days of awe-filling immersion into the Passion, Death and Resurrection of the Lord. Triduum is the goal, the summit, the extraordinary endpoint of our journey through forty days in the Lenten desert. It is unlike any other moment in the Church’s liturgical calendar – it’s almost like stepping over a threshold, out of chronological time and into kairos time, into a sacred space unique in the depth of engagement it offers, and in the beauty of liturgy that graces it. Truly nothing is like the Triduum liturgy! If you have never participated before, now is the time: you will never forget this incredible experience of time-out-of-time. 

    Join us first on Holy Thursday evening for the Feast of the Lord’s Supper and recall Jesus kneeling humbly before his disciples to wash their feet, then blessing, breaking, and sharing bread – the first Eucharist – with his disciples… Process afterwards with us to O'Brien Hall for Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament… 

   Follow in Jesus’ footsteps on the Way of the Cross Friday afternoon, and venerate the Wood of the Cross in remembrance of his death at the most extraordinary Communion service of the liturgical year… 

   Witness the Light of Christ as it slowly fills Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on Holy Saturday evening, and hear the story of salvation history, from Genesis to Romans… punctuated with a joyful Gloria that tells us that Resurrection is at hand… 

   And then, at last, on Easter Sunday, join in the joyful proclamation of Jesus Risen and know in the depth of your being God’s faithful and abiding love…. Alleluia! Come, make your way to the magnificence of Triduum! 

Image source: Jeffrey Smith, Sovereign (detail), prints available at: https://www.ascendingstorm.com/