Prayer to Mary, Help of Christians: Mary, most powerful Virgin,
You are the mighty and glorious Protector of the Church.
You are the marvelous Help of Christians.
You are awe-inspiring as an army in battle array.
You have destroyed heresy in the world.
In the midst of our anguish, our struggle and our distress
defend us from the power of the enemy,
and at the hour of our death receive our soul into heaven. Amen.
(By St. John Bosco)
There are some who wince at the notion of praying boldly to God, especially if anger or exasperation are part of that boldness. And yet the Bible itself models and counsels that we should include in our prayers the times when we are angry, exasperated, or disappointed in God. The psalms are filled with such prayers and great figures like Moses, David, and Job cry out to God quite plainly, expressing their anger and disappointment. I have written more on that here: A Meditation on the Role of Anger in Prayer.
At any rate, in this brief blog today I offer this example of a prayer of holy boldness from a great Saint of the Church: St. Catherine of Siena. Here is the background: Catherine’s mother, Lapa, lay dying, but Catherine was convinced that Lapa was not yet ready to die, and so she told God as much. The Lord disagreed, but Catherine remained undeterred in her assessment. And now we pick up the story and prayer …
Lapa died, or so it seemed to all the women who stood around her bed. She had refused to confess and receive the last Sacrament. Catherine lay over her mother’s corpse weeping and praying aloud.
O my dear Lord, is this how you keep the promise you once made to me that none in my house should suffer eternal death? You promised me too that you would not take my mother from this world before she could leave it in a state of grace, and here she lies dead, without having confessed or received the Sacrament. My Beloved Savior, I call to you in your great mercy, do not fail me! I will not go alive from your feet until you give me my mother back.
Speechless and overcome, the women around the deathbed saw that life seemed to creep back into Lapa’s body. She breathed and made some slight movement, … After a short time Monna Lapa was quite well again. [Told by her confessor, Blessed Fr. Raimondo, and inscribed in the Biography Catherine of Sienna by Sigrid Undset, pp 94-95].
And so here is the image of a saint at prayer: reverent but bold, seemingly unwilling to take “no” for an answer. Surely, on account of her usual and deep reverence, Catherine was allowed a bit more leeway than many of us; but do not doubt that God is often listening for us sinners to pray with a little conviction and intensity!
Somehow, too, it reminds me of a place called Cana, where the Mother of Jesus said, “They have no more wine.” And though Jesus seemed unwilling, I am convinced that Mary gave him a look that only a mother could, a look that wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. And the next thing you know, Jesus is making dozens of gallons of the best wine imaginable!
Are you praying with me, Church? Really praying? There is a place for boldness in prayer, not a boldness that loses all reverence, but a boldness nonetheless.
Jesus, in today’s Gospel, says that He is the good shepherd the prophets had promised to Israel.
He is the shepherd-prince, the new David—who frees people from bondage to sin and gathers them into one flock, the Church, under a new covenant, made in His blood (see Ezekiel 34:10–13, 23–31).
His flock includes other sheep, He says, far more than the dispersed children of Israel (see Isaiah 56:8; John 11:52). And He gave His Church the mission of shepherding all peoples to the Father.
In today’s First Reading, we see the beginnings of that mission in the testimony of Peter, whom the Lord appointed shepherd of His Church (see John 21:15–17).
Peter tells Israel’s leaders that the Psalm we sing today is a prophecy of their rejection and crucifixion of Christ. He tells the “builders” of Israel’s temple, that God has made the stone they rejected the cornerstone of a new spiritual temple, the Church (see Mark 12:10–13; 1 Peter 2:4–7).
Through the ministry of the Church, the shepherd still speaks (see Luke 10:16 ),and forgives sins (see John 20:23), and makes His body and blood present, that all may know Him in the breaking of the bread (see Luke 24:35). It is a mission that will continue until all the world is one flock under the one shepherd.
In laying down His life and taking it up again, Jesus made it possible for us to know God as He did—as sons and daughters of the Father who loves us. As we hear in today’s Epistle, He calls us His children, as He called Israel His son when He led them out of Egypt and made His covenant with them (see Exodus 4:22–23; Revelation 21:7).
Today, let us listen for His voice as He speaks to us in the Scriptures, and vow again to be more faithful followers. And let us give thanks for the blessings He bestows from His altar.
“Immaculate Conception, Mary my Mother… Possess my soul, Take over my entire personality and life, replace it with Yourself.” (Totus Tuus Prayer, Pope John Paul II)
As the story goes, so intimate was Pope John Paul II’s union with the Blessed Virgin Mary that when he was shot in St. Peter’s Square on May 13, 1981 and lay back in the vehicle, he looked up searching for an image of Our Lady. He found none. As a result, Pope John Paul II had a mosaic of Mary, Mater Ecclesiae (Mother of the Church) placed in the plaza later that same year, inaugurating it on December 8, 1981. Below the colorful image of Mary holding the Christ child are the words Totus Tuus (“Totally Yours”), the Pope’s papal motto. “John Paul II, convinced that the Virgin Mary had protected him on that day, immediately expressed the desire that an image of the Madonna be placed in the square,” explained Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Vatican Secretariat of State during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. It’s impossible to understand St. John Paul II without understanding his connection to Mary, the Mother of Christ. She is the key to comprehending the man, his life, and his papacy. Karol Wojtyla’s entrustment to Mary occurred at a young age. Born May 18, 1920, the young Karol lost his mother Emilia just prior to his ninth birthday. The day after her funeral, Karol’s father, took him and his older brother to an outdoor shrine, telling them that the Blessed Virgin Mary would look after them until they could be reunited with their mother in Heaven. In the intervening years, the young Karol took his first pilgrimage to Czestochowa, home of the Pauline Monastery of Jasna Góra and the painting of the Black Madonna, Our Lady of Czestochowa and a popular Polish shrine to the Virgin Mary. In secondary school Karol served as president of the Sodality of Mary, and as a young teen, he frequently visited a secluded convent church to pray before an image of Our Lady. Clearly, Karol had taken Mary as his spiritual mother. By the age of 20, Karol had lost everyone he loved — his grandparents, parents, and siblings. As a young adult, Karol became involved with Jan Tyranowski’s “Living Rosary” prayer group. Each member of the group was expected to pray a mystery of the Rosary daily. Through his relationship with Tyranowski, Karol deepened his relationship with the Blessed Mother and was introduced to the Carmelite spirituality of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. “He was one of those unknown saints, hidden amid the others like a marvelous light at the bottom of life, at a depth where night usually reigns,” said Pope John Paul II of Tyranowski. “He disclosed to me the riches of his inner life, of his mystical life. In his words, in his spirituality and in the example of a life given to God alone, he represented a new world that I did not yet know.” It was also at this time that Wojtyla was introduced to St. Louis de Montfort’s “True Devotion to Mary” and made his consecration to Jesus through Mary, describing it as a “decisive turning point” in his life. Not long after, under the Nazi occupation of Poland, Karol made his decision to enter the underground seminary and study for the priesthood. “I was already convinced that Mary leads us to Christ, but at that time I began to realize also that Christ leads us to his Mother,” said Wojtyla. “One can even say that just as Christ on Calvary indicated his mother to the disciple John, so he points her out to anyone who strives to know and love him.” Pope John Paul II admitted that he needed to reread de Montfort’s book several times to understand the idea that Marian consecration took nothing from devotion to Christ.
I found the answer to my perplexities due to the fear that the devotion to Mary, if excessive, might end by compromising the supremacy of the worship owed to Christ. Under the wise guidance of Saint Louis-Marie, I understood that, if one lives the mystery of Mary in Christ, such a risk does not exist.
With his election as Pope in 1978, Pope John Paul II took Totus Tuus as his papal motto, placing his entire pontificate into her hands. Whenever he began a book, encyclical, or speech, he inscribed the motto on the top of the first page, dedicated his writing to Mary. Exactly 64 years after Our Lady of Fatima’s appearance to three shepherd children in Fatima, Portugal, on May 13, 1981, shots rang out in St. Peter’s Square as an assassin attempted to kill Pope John Paul II. Riding in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, personal secretary Monsignor Stanislaw Dziwisz heard the Pope praying, “O Maria, Madonna! Maria, Madonna!” (“O Mary, my Mother”). Pope John Paul II later said that “one hand fired the bullet; another guided it.” He attributed his salvation to Mary’s intercession, even visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Fatima a year later and having the bullet placed in her crown. Read the rest here.
How much time and energy is exerted in obtaining a degree from some prestigious University? How much blood, sweat and tears are expended to win a trophy from some sporting event? How much time and energy can even be consumed in preparing for a surprise Birthday party? If we can expend so much time, money, emotional and physical energy for such natural pursuits, should we not at least expend more of our time and energy in what is the greatest of all arts, “The art of all arts” and that is learning the Practice of Prayer?
St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church, calls prayer the key to salvation and following are five short, clear and concrete steps we can undertake to improve our personal prayer life, grow in holiness, be a source of holiness to many others and experience a nearly constant peace and overflowing joy!
1. Conviction. First, we must be convinced of the importance of prayer in our life and for our eternal salvation. St. Alphonsus expresses it concisely: “He who prays will be saved; he who does not pray will be damned.” St. John Damascene defines prayer: “Lifting of the mind and heart to God.” St. Augustine has a catchy way of expressing the indispensable character of prayer: “He who prays well lives well; he who lives well dies well; and for he who dies well, all is well.” A final easy analogy: as air is to the lungs, so must prayer be to our soul. No air for the lungs, death arrives quickly. Likewise, the prayer-less person can easily fall prey to temptation and fall into mortal sin and lose out on God’s Friendship.
2. Confession. If we are not at peace with God, if our conscience is reproaching us, if we have unforgiven and unconfessed sins we will find that talking face to face with God as friends will be all the more difficult. If we hurt our friend, we apologize, seek forgiveness, and then return to amicable relations.
3. Set a time and a place to pray. Man is a creature of habit. We do certain things every day at the same time and place. Of capital importance should be to form the habit of prayer. This habit will result in our salvation and possibly the salvation of many others. We can pray at any time and any place and in any circumstance. However, there are “Prime times” that we should pray. Morning prayer upon arising from sleep, grace before meals, before going on a trip, the family Rosary in the evening before dinner, and night prayers—these are traditional times for prayer.
4. Mass and Holy Communion. By far the greatest prayer in the world is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Sunday Mass is obligatory, under pain of mortal sin. However, if we are truly in love with God, we should not aim for the minimum but rather the maximum! The greatest action and gesture under the heavens that will lead us to eternal life in heaven is to assist at Holy Mass and receive Holy Communion fervently, humbly, and with great confidence. The angels in heaven experience a holy envy towards us because even the greatest of angels cannot receive Jesus in Holy Communion. How privileged we really are!
5. Seek Our Lady of the Rosary. Our Lady of Fatima appeared in 1917 from May to October. In every one of the Apparitions she insisted on the praying of the Rosary. Blessed Pope John Paul II, in Blessed Virgin Mary and the Rosary, also insisted that we pray the Rosary and for two specific important intentions: 1) for world peace, 2) for the sake of the family. The Rosary priest, Father Patrick Peyton, coined these immortal proverbs: “The family that prays together, stays together….” And “A world at prayer is a world at peace.” The family should find a time and place and pray the Rosary every day. May the father who is the spiritual head of the family initiate this practice, bring the family together, and persevere in this prayer for the salvation of his entire family.
If we can implement these five concrete practices in our personal prayer life then we will bring forth fruit and fruit in abundance! May Our Lady of grace inspire us to undertake a daily growth in our prayer life.
The path to holiness does not involve wrestling with some abstract boogeyman, but involves a “constant struggle against the devil, the prince of evil,” Pope Francis said.
In his new apostolic exhortation, “Gaudete et Exsultate” (“Rejoice and Be Glad”), released by the Vatican April 9, the Pope urged Christians not to think of the devil as an intangible construct but rather “a personal being who assails us.”
“We should not think of the devil as a myth, a representation, a symbol, a figure of speech or an idea,” the Pope wrote. “This mistake would leave us to let down our guard, to grow careless and end up more vulnerable.”
Taking advantage of that vulnerability, he added, the devil “does not need to possess us. He poisons us with the venom of hatred, desolation, envy and vice.”
Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has warned of the presence of the devil and the dangers of going to hell if one doesn’t turn away from sin.
Recently, however, doubts were cast on the Pope’s beliefs on hell and the consequences of sin when Eugenio Scalfari, a co-founder and former editor of La Repubblica, an Italian daily, claimed that Pope Francis said, “Hell does not exist.”
The Italian journalist has explained on more than one occasion that he does not take notes or record his conversations with the Pope; he re-creates them afterward from memory, including the material he puts in quotation marks.
Shortly after the interview was published in March, the Vatican issued a statement pointing out that Scalfari’s article “is a product of his own reconstruction in which the actual words pronounced by the Pope are not cited.”
In his apostolic exhortation on “the call to holiness in the modern world,” the Pope said Christian life isn’t merely a struggle against human weaknesses or worldly mentalities but a spiritual battle against a very real threat.
“We will not admit the existence of the devil if we insist on regarding life by empirical standards alone, without a supernatural understanding,” he wrote.
While acknowledging that in biblical times there were “limited conceptual resources” to understand the difference between demonic possession and mental illness, the Pope said it should not “lead us to an oversimplification that would conclude that all the cases related in the Gospel had to do with psychological disorders and hence that the devil does not exist or is not at work.”
The path toward holiness, he explained, is a constant battle and without the “powerful weapons” of prayer, the sacraments and works of charity, Christians “will be prey to failure or mediocrity.”
“If we become careless, the false promises of evil will easily seduce us,” the Pope said.
In the fight against the devil, Pope Francis added, cultivating good, progressing in the spiritual life and growing in love are the best ways to counter evil. However, those who choose to remain neutral and “renounce the ideal of giving themselves generously to the Lord, will never hold out.”
“Christian triumph is always a cross, yet a cross which is at the same time a victorious banner, borne with aggressive tenderness against the assaults of evil,” he said.
According to both Blessed John Paul II and Saint Faustina Maria Kowalska, the virtue of mercy is the greatest attribute in the Heart of Jesus. This being the case we should strive to understand this virtue and even more important try to live it out to the full.
Mercy could be defined as God loving and forgiving the sinner. Most clearly can this be seen in the Parable of the Prodigal Son or if you like the merciful Father—found in Luke 15. The son sinned seriously but the loving Father forgave him fully by hugging him, kissing him, placing a ring on his finger, giving him new sandals and a new cloak; and if that were not enough the father threw a huge banquet for the wayward son by killing the fatted calf amidst song and dance.
Every time we renounce and repudiate our sin and our attachment to that sin and make a good confession, God the Father showers us with many of the same graces. God becomes our loving Father, Jesus our best of brothers, the Holy Spirit our best friend and sweet guest of our soul and many more choice blessings! Praise God for His mercy.
St Faustina and the Diary of Mercy
The past few years there has been a growing knowledge, devotion and love for Divine mercy as communicated to us through the inspired writings of Saint Faustina Kowalska. Actually Jesus gave her as title, “The Secretary of Divine Mercy”.
To give even greater weight to this modern saint and her writings, Blessed Pope John Paul II’s first canonization in the new millennium—on Divine Mercy Sunday—was St. Faustina Kowlasksa. Nothing happens by chance.
We would like to encourage all to embrace the beautiful and inspiring doctrine of mercy by striving to become familiar with Saint Faustina and the Diary of Mercy. Following will be a brief summary of the major tenets of this doctrine.
1. God is Rich in Mercy. God’s greatest attribute/virtue is His mercy. No matter how grave and numerous our sins, God is always ready and willing to forgive us if we simply say: “Jesus I am sorry and forgive me!” In a heartbeat Jesus is ready to forgive even the worst of sinners. St. Paul reminds us with these words: “Wheresin abounds the mercy of God abounds all the more.”Pope Francis teaches us on mercy the following: “God never tires in forgiving us, but we become tired of asking for forgiveness!” The first canonized saint was the Good thief who pleaded for the mercy of Jesus and the merciful Savior responded: “Amen I say to you, today you will be with me in heaven.” Fulton Sheen wryly rejoins: “And the thief died a thief because he stole heaven!”
2. We Must Be Merciful. If we want to receive the mercy of God, then this is a two-way street, we in turn must be willing to forgive those who have hurt us and be merciful. Jesus once again teaches us: “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful.” The most renowned prayer in the world also reminds us (The Our Father). “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us…” To receive God’s mercy, we must be merciful! Not just seven times, but seventy times seven times. Meaning: always!
3. Confession. God’s mercy is manifested most abundantly upon our soul when we have recourse to the Sacrament of Confession which can also be called the Sacrament of God’s mercy. Jesus expresses mercy in the person of the priest. If you have not been to confession in years, return. Jesus the merciful Savior is gently and patiently waiting for you.
It is a wonderful time of year. Spring is here and the opening day of baseball. The weather is becoming nicer and the days longer. Lent has given way to Easter, and the Octave of Easter gives way on the following Sunday to “Divine Mercy Sunday.” It is another great reason to love the season. But, what is so great about Divine Mercy Sunday?
The Promise
Divine Mercy Sunday may be the greatest day of the year because of the immeasurable amount of grace Jesus promised to pour forth on this day. In the private revelation accepted publicly by the Church, Jesus made a specific promise to Saint Faustina about Divine Mercy Sunday:
“On that day . . . The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment.” (Diary, 699)
Conditions
Christ wanted to draw our attention to the immense importance of these two sacraments of Confession and Holy Communion. So much so, that Christ’s promise amounts to offering the graces of a complete pardon, or essentially a second baptism!
Jesus reiterated these conditions and promise of a complete pardon at least two other times to her. (Diary, 300 & 1109) The “oceans of grace” available to us on Divine Mercy Sunday can make us anew and give us a fresh start again. We simply have to make a good Confession (such as the Saturday before) and stay in a state of grace up to receiving Holy Communion on Divine Mercy Sunday or the vigil Mass. Jesus requested we also do works of mercy whether deed, word, or prayer.
Stigmata is one of the strangest phenomenons in the Catholic Church in the last few centuries.
If you don’t already know, stigmata is a supernatural phenomenon in which the wounds of Christ from his passion and death miraculously appear on a person’s body. Some saints have also suffered what is called invisible stigmata, in which they feel the sufferings of Christ but without the bodily marks.
What should Catholics make of this?
Here are 6 things you may not have known about this incredible phenomenon:
1) The first stigmata dates back to the 13th century
There are no known accounts of stigmata prior to St. Francis of Assisi receiving it in the 13th century. You can read the amazing account of his stigmata from his first biography here.
For most of Church history, no one had heard of stigmata, and now it’s something many people claim to experience, which brings us to our next point…
2) Hundreds of people have claimed stigmata since then
Even though there are no known cases of stigmata prior to St. Francis of Assisi in the 13th century, since then there have been hundreds of people who have claimed to have miraculously received stigmata.
It’s hard to understand why God may start acting in a new way, and some people take this fact as an argument against the supernatural character of at least most stigmata (seeing most as copycats rather than miracles).
3) At least one stigmatist admitted to faking it
And yes, at least one significant stigmatist publicly admitted to faking it. Magdalena de la Cruz was a Franciscan nun in Spain in the 16th century who for years claimed to have miraculously received stigmata. She was famous and widely considered to a be living saint, though St. Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits) viewed her with suspicion.
At the end of her life, though, after getting very sick, she admitted that her stigmata was fake. She was tried and found guilty by the Inquisition, which sentenced her to penance for the rest of her life in her convent.
4) Around 85% of stigmatists have been women
This number might be a bit dated (it’s hard to find up to date statistics on this sort of thing), but according to a study in the early 20th century, out of 321 known stigmatists from the 13th century until then, only 41 of them had been men.
Even so, some of the most famous cases have been men, such as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Padre Pio.
5) St. Padre Pio had stigmata for 50 years and was studied by multiple doctors
Probably the most famous modern case of stigmata, and one that was able to be examined in light of modern science, was the stigmata of St. Padre Pio.
He first received it as a young man in 1911 at the age of 24. Word began to spread worldwide about his condition in 1919. From the 1920s through the 1950s, multiple sets of doctors and scientists examined and studied his wounds, with differing conclusions. While everyone agreed the wounds were real, they couldn’t conclusively determine whether they were miraculous, natural, or simply self-inflicted.
The Church, however, was satisfied enough with the evidence for Padre Pio being honest that Pope St. John Paul II canonized him in 2002.
6) St. Catherine of Siena had invisible stigmata
The famous 14th century saint first received the normal visible stigmata when she was 28. But she humbly didn’t want to draw attention to herself, so she requested that God take away the physical wounds while keeping the same physical suffering. Other saints have also reportedly done this.
The following comes from Fr. Rutler at the NCR: We know directly from Saint Paul that Greek philosophers thought the Resurrection was a curious absurdity. Politicians more pragmatically feared that it would upset the whole social order. One of the earliest Christian “apologists,” or explainers, was Saint Justin Martyr who tried to persuade the emperor Antoninus Pius that Christianity is the fulfillment of the best intuitions of classical philosophers like Socrates and Plato.
Justin was reared in an erudite pagan family in Samaria, in the land of Israel just about one lifetime from the Resurrection. Justin studied hard and accepted Christ as his Savior, probably in Ephesus, and then set up his own philosophical school in Rome to explain the sound logic of the Divine Logos. Refusing to worship the Roman gods, and threatened with torture by the Prefect Rusticus, he said: “You can kill us, but you cannot hurt us.” Then he was beheaded.
Fast forward almost exactly a thousand years, and another philosopher, Bernard of Chartres, also admired the best of the Greek philosophers and coined the phrase “We are dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” There had been long centuries without much effort to explain the mystery of the Resurrection with luminous intelligence. In the seventeenth century, Isaac Newton would describe himself the same way. Being intellectual dwarfs may sound pessimistic, but there was also optimism in the fact that, lifted on the shoulders of giants, they could see even farther than the giants themselves. In witness to that, less than fifty years after Bernard died, building began on the great cathedral of Chartres. The magnificent rose window in the south transept depicts the evangelists as small men on the shoulders of the tall prophets. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are closer to Christ in the center of the window, than Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel and Daniel who lift them up, seeing in fact what the prophets had longed for in hope.
The Risen Christ is neither a ghost nor a mere mortal. Ancient philosophies could be vague about things supernatural, and ancient cults could be distant from personal conduct. The Resurrection unites ethics and worship. The famous letter of an anonymous contemporary of Justin Martyr, meant to be read by the emperor Marcus Aurelius, said that the way Christians live “has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines.”
The Resurrection was the greatest event in history, and unlike other events that affect life in subsequent generations in different degrees by sequential cause and effect, the Resurrection is a living force for all time, making Christ present both objectively in the Sacraments, and personally in those who accept him. Thus, indifference to the Resurrection is not an option. The future life of each one of us depends on a willingness to be saved from eternal death.
The serpent’s bite was a deadly one. The venom had worked its way deep into the heart of the entire human race, doing its gruesome work. The anti-venom was unavailable until He appeared. One drop was all that was needed, so potent was this antidote. Yet it was not like Him to be stingy. He poured out all he had, down to the last drop. The sacrifice of His entire life, poured out at the foot of the cross – This was the Son’s answer to the Problem of Sin.
Three days later came the Father’s answer to the Problem of Death. It was equally extravagant. For Jesus was not simply brought back to life like Lazarus. That would be resuscitation, the return to normal, human life, with all its limitations. Including death. Yes Lazarus ultimately had to go through it all again . . . the dying, the grieving family, the burial. Jesus did not “come back.” He passed over, passed through. His resurrection meant that he would no longer be subject to death. Death, as St. Paul said, would have no more power over him.
You may say that physical death was not the worst consequence of sin, and you’d be right. Separation from God, spiritual death, is much more fearsome. But enough with the talk that physical death is beautiful and natural. It is not. Our bodies are not motor vehicles driven around by our souls. We do not junk them when they wear out and buy another one (that’s one problem with the reincarnation idea). Rather, are bodies are an essential dimension of who we are. Our bodies and immortal souls are intimately intertwined, which makes us so different from both angels and animals. Therefore death separates what God has joined. So it is natural that we rebel against it and shudder before it. Even the God-man trembled in the Garden.
So Jesus confronts death head on, for our sake. The Roman Easter sequence, a traditional poem/song stretching back into the first millennium, highlights the drama:“Mors et vitae duello, conflixere mirando. Dux vitae mortuus regnat vivus.” (“Death and life dueled in a marvelous conflict; the Dead Ruler of Life reigns Alive!”) Gandalf the Grey who sacrificed himself to take out the Balrog, returns as Gandalf the White (Tolkein heard this sung for many Easters before he wrote The Lord of the Rings).
“He descended into Hell” of the Apostle’s Creed means that Jesus endured the wrenching of body and soul for our sakes and came out the other side endowed with a new, different, glorified humanity. How does the Bible describe it? Well, Mary Magdalene did not recognize the Risen Christ at first, until He called her by name. The disciples on the road to Emmaus didn’t recognize him either. But doubting Thomas shows us that his wounds were still evident. And though he could pass through locked doors, he proved he was not a ghost by asking for something to eat. Paul describes it as a “spiritual body” in I Corinthians 15, which sounds like an oxymoron to me. But we have to take off our shoes here, realize that we are on holy ground, and that we do not have words adequate to describe the awesome reality of the new humanity he has won for us.
Welcome to the Blog! I am a Catholic Priest and was ordained to the priesthood on August 26, 2000. I hope this site is a place of interest for you where you will find ideas and information on the Catholic faith and the Church.
Prayer to Mary, Help of Christians:
The following comes from Msgr. Pope:
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