Let’s walk with Christ

Palm Sunday

A reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Philipians (2, 5-11)

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God

as something to be exploited,

but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,

being born in human likeness.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.

Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name that is above every name,

so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,

in heaven and on earth and under the earth,

and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,

to the glory of God the Father.

This is the Word of the Lord

Today the Church celebrates Palm Sunday, and today’s liturgy points to the mystery we will be celebrating throughout the following week and which finds its highest point in the Celebration of Easter. Today, palms which were used by all nations as a sign of joy and victory, and which the Church has also adapted as a symbol for martyrs, are blessed and carried in procession as a sort of re-enactment of Christ’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem.

Bearing witness, being church: Dominican sisters in Iraq

Please read this post published on National Catholic Reporter
February 7-8, 2015
Thank you.

By Dawn Cherie Araujo  

In the middle of makeshift refugee camps, the Dominican Sisters of St. Catherine of Siena are trying to make life work. They get up every morning for prayer, and then they spend the rest of the day visiting the thousands of Iraqi refugees living in the abandoned malls and unfinished construction sites of Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. The sisters would like to open schools for the children, but for now they're making do with a Montessori kindergarten that's run out of an apartment.

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Pope Francis: Did I learn to cry...?

Please watch and meditate on this video.

DO NOT STOP LOOKING FOR HIM

God has become man. He has become a child. Thus he fulfills the great and mysterious promise to be Emmanuel: God-with-us. Now he is no longer unreachable for anybody. God is Emmanuel. By becoming a child, he offers us the possibility of being on familiar terms with him.

I am reminded here of a rabbinical tale recorded by Elie Wiesel. He tells of Jehel, a little boy, who comes running into the room of his grandfather, the famous Rabbi Baruch. Big tears are rolling down his cheeks. And he cries, “My friend has totally given up on me. He is very unfair and very mean to me.” “Well, could you explain this a little more?” asks the Master. “Okay”, responds the little boy. “We were playing hide and seek. I was hiding so well that he could not find me. But then he simply gave up and went home. Isn’t that mean?” The most exciting hiding place has lost its excitement because the other stops playing. The Master caresses the boy’s face. He himself now has tears in his eyes. And he says, “Yes, this is not nice. But look, it is the same way with God. He is in hiding, and we do not seek him. Just imagine! God is hiding, and we people do not even look for him.” In this little story a Christian is able to find the key to the ancient mystery of Christmas. God is in hiding. He waits for his creation to set out toward him, he waits for a new and willing Yes to come about, for love to arise as a new reality out of his creation. He waits for man.

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI: Unpublished homily, December 24,1980

On St. Stephen’s day

Stephen, filled with grace and power, was working great wonders and signs among the people.

Certain members of the so-called Synagogue of Freedmen, Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and people from Cilicia and Asia, came forward and debated with Stephen, but they could not withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke. … When they heard this, they were infuriated, and they ground their teeth at him. But he, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked up intently to heaven and saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said, “Behold, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” But they cried out in a loud voice, covered their ears, and rushed upon him together. They threw him out of the city, and began to stone him. The witnesses laid down their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul.  As they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”  (Acts 6:8-10; 7:54-59)

I pray my words reach you.

"I pray my words reach you.

I pray they reach the multitudes that are looking at your story and believing the lie that suffering is a mistake, that dying isn’t to be braved, that choosing our death is the courageous story.

No – hastening death was never what God intended.

But in our dying, He does meet us with His beautiful grace."

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No stumbling blocks, please!

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke (17, 1-6)

“Jesus said to his disciples, “Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to anyone by whom they come! It would be better for you if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea than for you to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Be on your guard! If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says, ‘I repent,’ you must forgive.”

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

This is the word of the Lord.