Good Friday

"...Christ necessarily had the potentiality for dying, because he was really a man, but...he was nevertheless not subject to the necessitas moriendi; Christ died not because he had to but because he wanted to." (Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality)





"He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised
for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made
us whole, and with his stripes we are healed." (Isaiah 53:5)

Fifth Week of Lent

"If death is in truth punishment, then there is something in it that ought to be...good--it cannot be entirely bad--insofar as punishment 'makes good again' and restores to order something which had been wrong....To be sure, this good is not brought about of its own accord, and not in every case; it is obtained by one who accepts in his heart the malum, the badness and bitterness, the punishment." (Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality)

Fourth Week of Lent

"A loss can be healing; something bad can be good for us for the very reason that it oppresses and torments us. This curious configuration, this association of seeming incompatibles, becomes clear in a single case: in the concept and the reality of just punishment. And just this is expressed by the [Christian] tradition: death has been imposed upon man as punishment." (Josef Pieper, Death and Immortality)

Ad Majorem Gloria Dei

What struck me were his eyes: grave, compassionate, and peaceful. And the profound power of silence and "simple" prayers. Then to take the name of Francis, our patron! Similarly, may he rebuild the Church, on sure foundation. Deo gratias!

A Man of Prayer

"This is a place in which man opens to God in a special way. A place where, far from everything, but also at the same time close to nature, one can speak confidentially to God Himself....He must announce the 'magnalia Dei,' the great works of God and, at the same time, express himself in this sublime relationship with God, because in the visible world only he can do so....Prayer, which expresses in various ways man's relationship with the living God, is also the first task and almost the first announcement of the Pope, just as it is the first condition of his service in the Church and in the world." (John Paul II at Mentorella, two weeks after his election as pope in 1978.)

May the Holy Spirit aid the College of Cardinals in discerning the man of prayer in their midst.                                                                                                                                                               

The Haven of Lent

 ..."by fasting, reading, and prayer in these forty days we ought to store up for our souls provisions, as it were, for the whole year. Although through the mercy of God you frequently and devoutly hear the divine lessons throughout the entire year, still during these days we ought to rest from the winds and the sea of this world by taking refuge...in the haven of Lent, and in the quiet of silence to receive the divine lessons in the receptacle of our heart." --from a Lenten sermon of St. Caesarius of Arles, d. 543