The Resurrection means nothing if it doesn’t mean that we, too, will be raised from the dead in body and soul by Christ’s power. Tucked away in a dusty valley in the South of France, in the hill country that slopes up from the Mediterranean, there shines in the darkness of a medieval church a [...]
What are we to make of the Christian who says: “I am not so naïve or literal in my understanding as to expect Jesus physically to rise from the dead. Surely the true meaning of this belief is that he continued to exist in some spiritual manner”? Some years ago there was an Anglican bishop [...]
We must not invest in the transient things of this world, the very worst of investments, but in the everlasting things of heaven. If we fight the long defeat with the things of heaven in mind, we will attain the final victory. It is this final victory that represents, for each of us, the final [...]
Christ descended into hell to deliver His loved ones from their exile. He came to reward those who, from our first father, Adam, to His own foster-father, St. Joseph, had fought the good fight and had finished the race. The second reading from the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday is taken from an ancient homily on Christ’s [...]
The Blessed Virgin did not leave the Temple without shedding many tears. She thought over the destruction of the Temple of the Body of Jesus which had been brought about by his enemies, and she sighed with a longing desire for the dawning of that third day when the words of eternal truth were to [...]
Not only did Jesus manifest Himself as the Logos so long desired in the pagan West on that Friday afternoon, but He also manifested Himself as the Christ, the true and eternal king. In some mysterious way, it was the death on Friday that revealed all of this, not the resurrection on Sunday. As Jesus [...]
The “Seven Last Words of Christ” can seen as the verbal expression of an interior reality: namely, the mind of Christ, as formed according to a deeply ingrained, habitual life practice of living mindfully according to the Lord’s Prayer. Holy Week is an especially fruitful time for prayerful meditation. There are many liturgical events at [...]
I went with Peter to make the arrangements for the Passover supper. When we arrived in Jerusalem, Jesus had told us to look for a man carrying a pitcher of water. We were to follow him into the house he entered, ask to speak to the owner, and say: “The master asks you where is [...]
As we rise for our labors each day, the dawn wakes and revives us. But our God needs none to rouse him. If you long for him, it is not to stir him to your aid. It is because he has awoken you. Awake, lyre and harp. I will awake the dawn. (Ps 57:8) It [...]
Christ is not a part of the Church; rather, the Church might be called a part of Christ, grafted upon Him, living by Him and for Him, suffering with Him in order to rule with Him. To say that the Easter observances are the center of the ecclesiastical year leaves much untold: they are the [...]
Every Alleluia that we omit during Lent we make up for during the Easter season. By my count, on an ordinary weekday, we friars typically employ the word Alleluia about 13 times in our common prayers. When Lent comes, we omit all of these Alleluias. Then, in what may seem like a dramatic overcorrection, on [...]
The vast majority of human beings of all races and in every place and at every time have understood that there is such a thing as the miraculous, that strange things do happen, and that our materialist explanations do not explain everything. Some time ago a friend of mine told me a miracle story. He [...]
Would I have stood by the cross? Would I have still hoped, if I had watched my Incarnate Hope die? In this world, we suffer from our sins and the sins of others. Jesus comes to us—just as he came to the first disciples—and tells us that he has come to triumph over all the [...]
With eyes wide open to the degradation we see all around us, we know that things are rotten in the modern world. Who can deny it? And yet there are more Christians in the world today than there have ever been in the past. The Church is not dead. Christendom has had a series of [...]