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Some Beautiful Truths of the Sorrowful Mysteries

8/29/2014

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Image courtesy of vonvanci at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary this Friday, I had a clearer notion of Christ’s personal situation during His Passion.

Everything Christ did during His life, and especially during those awful last hours, point to His great love for us. 

But our human notion of real love is sketchy at best. Only through examining love in action through Jesus can we grasp the real essence of love.

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Image courtesy of luigi diamanti at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Stopping the Pain

God in His three Persons is almighty and all powerful. At any time throughout His torture, Christ could have said, “Enough!” and halted the process.

He could also have revealed Himself as the transfigured Christ – with all wounds healed.  Can you imagine how terrified and in awe of Him the Jews and Romans would have been had He done that?

Instead he endured being whipped repeatedly with steel tips, spat upon, hit, jeered at and mocked. He was clothed in a purple cloak which was then ripped off His back after the blood from His scourging had dried on the material.

Thorns were pressed into His head and He was forced to carry His own heavy cross, when he had no energy left. When had he last eaten or drunk? At the Passover meal with the Apostles. That was hours ago.  

The cross dug into his shoulder, inflicting even more pain, well before he was nailed to it and hoisted, naked, for all to sneer at while he took three hours to die of suffocation.

And at any point during this excruciating ordeal, He could have said, “Stop!”

But He didn’t.

Doesn’t that give us pause for thought? Do any of us love even one person enough to go through such agony for them, let alone the whole of flawed humanity?

It takes unbelievable humility to act as if you have no power over your persecutors.

That’s real love.

Makes one think, doesn’t it? 

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Image courtesy of lamnee at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
He Descended into Hell for Us

I've often wondered what the phrase in the Creed ‘He descended into Hell’ means.

Hell is separation from God. No one can enter communion with God in Heaven if he or she is not pure. We must be purged in Purgatory of our remaining impurities before we can enter Heaven.

Christ took on all the sins of the world – past, present and future – when He let Himself be crucified. He became impure. For the first, last and only time, He was separated from God.

And not because of anything He had done wrong. Completely pure, He became impure out of love for us. He’d been one with the Father from the beginning of time, and now, because He wanted to save us, He agreed to be separated from His Father.

No wonder he cried out, “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” The agony of being split from the Trinity must have been far worse than any physical pain. Even though He knew it was temporary and necessary to conquer death, it was going to be – well, Hell for Him.

And when we realize that He was fully aware that this horrible moment of separation was imminent, the Agony in the Garden takes on an added dimension, doesn’t it?

Yet Jesus did this out of love for us.

Another beautiful truth.        

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Image courtesy of lamnee at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Saved or Not?

He knew already in the Garden of Gethsemane just how many souls His sacrifice would save. He also knew the exact number of those who would spurn His sacrifice and descend into Hell.

Those latter souls will have refused to believe in God during their lifetime, only to discover His existence when they die. At the very moment when they believe in Him, they will be separated from Him.

Just when they desire Him above all things, it will be too late. They will never be with Him in Heaven. 

Imagine how the knowledge of these truths increased Christ’s agony! We can readily sympathize with His prayers to have the chalice removed from His lips. 

Yet He still went through His Passion out of love for us all. Even if only a few of us make it through that narrow door, Christ wanted to show us just how much He cared about every single human being, by dying a horrible death to give us all a chance to be saved.

Isn’t that another beautiful truth?  

So how are we going to show Him our appreciation of what He went through ‘for us men and for our salvation’?

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Image courtesy of pandpstock001 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
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Watching Christ Being Crucified

4/18/2014

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Image courtesy of bela_kiefer / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I guess it’s become almost a cliché to watch Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ during Lent, but I’d managed to avoid watching it ever since it came out in 2004. That’s 10 years of successful evasion!

I was quite happy to keep it that way.

Not being a fan of gore, and fully aware of Mel Gibson’s penchant for bloodiness, I had a good enough imagination to visualize Christ’s sufferings without seeing his extended version of it.

The Escape Is Over

This Lent a friend of mine bought the DVD and wanted me to watch it with her. No one had asked me to see the film before, and I felt this was God’s way of telling me It Is High Time I Did.

Reluctantly, I agreed. Two other Christian friends were invited to come the very next evening to my house. I wanted to get this thing over and done with! It wasn’t the kind of movie I looked forward to viewing.

They said they’d love to join us. There: I was going to have to suffer through Christ’s Passion with Him.

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Image courtesy of Ohmmy3d / FreeDigitalPhotos.net


What Does ‘Satan’ Mean Again?

Throughout the day of our gathering, I was forcefully reminded that the name ‘Satan’ in Hebrew means ‘the opposer' as he is opposed to what God wants.

I’m not good at switching the TV into DVD mode. After twiddling the knobs for about an hour that afternoon, sweating buckets because I was getting nowhere, I called my husband for help. (I hate doing that!)

He told me that he ‘twiddles the knobs until it works.’ I thanked him profusely for his valuable help and texted my son in college.

He was in class and would get back to me at 3:15 p.m.  Relieved, I pottered around the house until the appointed time.

3:15 p.m. came and went with no phone call. To stop myself from obsessing, I twiddled the knobs a bit more and got the sound but no picture. After fifteen more minutes I could stand it no longer and actually phoned my son.

No response.

To calm my nerves, and praying to the Holy Spirit to make everything O.K. for that evening, I took my cell phone down to the barn and started brushing my horse.  Immediately my cell rang and it was my son.

I ran back to the house and my son directed me through the process. Two wires had come out of the back of the TV, and reattaching them was crucial to the outcome in addition to twiddling the right knobs.

Ha, take that, Satan!

Again, What Does ‘Satan’ Mean?

Flushed with success, I went about getting food ready for my soon-to-be-arriving guests.

In the middle of slicing the tomatoes I gashed my finger. My immediate thought was, ‘Satan, you really don’t want us to watch this film, do you? Well, we’re gonna, so there!’

I still wasn’t completely ready by the time my friends arrived, but luckily they’re my friends because they like me not for my food. (This is where I remind anyone who doesn’t know or remember that I’m British.)

We ate and chatted, while trying to calm down my English bulldog Jeeves,  who was thrilled to have so many people to say ‘hello’ to.

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Image courtesy of bela_kiefer / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Movie

The movie was tough to watch, as anticipated.

I doubt whether I have anything more meaningful to say about it than others who’ve done so before me. But that won’t stop me adding my two cents’ worth!

Imagining the sufferings of Christ is very different from ‘witnessing’ the gratuitous cruelty of the Romans in those days. Even if Mel Gibson included details that aren’t historically true, it is well documented how cruel those people were. The truth is, Christ suffered horribly for us.

It was also interesting to see the dilemma of Pontius Pilate, faced with either putting Christ to death or virtually being put to death himself. He knew he was sending an innocent man to a wretched torture.

There, But For the Grace of God, Go I

The Jewish leaders were clearly jealous of Christ’s authority. But some of them genuinely believed they were dealing with a heretic who had delusions of being God, who needed to be silenced.

If I had been a Jew in those days I, too, would have strewn Christ’s path with palm fronds as he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Carried away by the sentiment of the crowd, I’d have shouted “Hosanna in the highest!” with the best of them.

And seven days later, swayed by popular opinion yet again, I’d have cried out for Christ’s blood: “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

Do you ever stop to think about how lucky we are to be born after Christ’s time? 

As wonderful as it would have been to witness His miracles, I’m pretty sure I’d have agreed with whatever the Jewish authorities told me to believe.

Being alive in this day and age, we have the benefit of hindsight. We have the support of centuries of faith, the example of the saints – ordinary people who exhibited extraordinary love and proved that it is possible to follow in the footsteps of Christ.

I love that last line in the Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.” It is wonderful to know that the saints and the angels are with us at every Mass!

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Image courtesy of vongvanvi / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Every Day We Are Redeemed

Not just at 3 p.m. on Good Friday, when He dies on the cross, but every day, we need to truly appreciate what Christ went through for our salvation: ‘we have been bought at a price’ (1 Cor. 6:20). A very high price.

Whenever we’re inclined to make selfish decisions, let’s remember His selflessness in suffering torture and humiliation to redeem every last one of us. 

Whatever wrong we’ve done, God wants to forgive us. We just have to repent and ask Him for forgiveness. His Son died so we could be forgiven.

This Easter will we spurn Jesus' sacrifice on Good Friday by refusing to beg forgiveness, thereby condemning ourselves to eternal damnation?

If you haven’t watched The Passion of Christ, our pastor - and I - recommend it as a way of grasping the awesomeness of what Jesus did for us in order that we might join Him in His Resurrection.

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Would You Wash Judas' Feet?

1/27/2014

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When I recite the Rosary, my mind sometimes wanders off in totally unrelated directions. Sure enough, this Friday, while I was praying the first decade – the Agony in the Garden – my thoughts drifted to secular topics, which had nothing to do with Christ's  anguished beads of blood-sweat.

I looked for a new aspect of the event to get me back on track.

It occurred to me that Christ had just washed the feet of the man who - any moment now - would enter the garden and betray Him.

How did that feel?

How Did He Do It?!
Would we have washed Judas’ feet? Would we have performed such a humiliating task for the very person we already knew was going to hand us over to be scourged, hit, spat on, have thorns stuck into our head, and be forced to carry a heavy cross - so we could be attached to it with big nails driven through our hands and feet?

That’s what makes Jesus’ act of humility even more amazing. Not only was He performing a slave’s job for His followers. He already knew Judas was going to betray Him - “And you are clean, though not every one of you” (v. 10) - yet Jesus washed his feet, too! That demanded enormous love.

The article Jesus Washes His Disciples’ Feet reads: “For the love that is evident in the laying down of life at the crucifixion is also demonstrated in the laying down of life in humble service in the footwashing.”

Humble Re-enactment
On Maundy Thursday we witness the commemoration of that night as the priest washes the feet of twelve parishioners. And I always wonder why those particular twelve are chosen? What are the criteria for having your feet washed in church? (Thankfully I’ll never qualify - no one wants to see my sorry toes!)

One year our pastor called up twelve young men who’d expressed an interest in the priesthood. That was beautiful, and I appreciated the worthiness of those parishioners to be recognized in public.

But another priest recounted how he’d desperately not wanted to wash the feet of a particular church member, because the man was openly and loudly critical of him. For that very reason the priest’s spiritual director ordered him to include that man in the Maundy Thursday line-up.

It was very hard - humiliating and humbling – but the priest obeyed and bathed his enemy’s feet.

Now that's impressive!


Christ’s humility that night – washing all twelve disciples’ feet when He was aware that one of them would soon double-cross Him – is certainly something to recall when reciting the Agony in the Garden decade on the Rosary.

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Anger Management with St Bridget

8/21/2012

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Anger with each other is a waste of energy - and lonely, too.
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A harmonious relationship is much nicer than holding grudges!
A truly wonderful lady where I volunteer once a week, who has become my spiritual mentor/supporter, gave me a little booklet called “The Pieta Prayer Book.” It contains a vast number of terrific prayers, one of which I began praying daily.

The Anger

One evening my husband said something really hurtful to me. I spat some suitably angry remark back at him then stormed off.

Just to ‘show him’ I grabbed a pillow and blanket from our bedroom, and resolved to sleep in the spare room, perfectly happy to let the sun go down on my anger.

Before laying down my resentful head, I sat down in my usual spot and began to read my daily prayers.

They are the Fifteen St. Bridget Prayers.

Our Lord appeared to St. Bridget of Sweden and told her that she would have honored each of His wounds if she recited the above prayers daily for a whole year.

There are also 21 St. Bridget Promises, traditionally associated with her prayers. You will find them at the end of the page I've linked. There is some confusion here. The booklet states that their supernatural origin has not been proved, and they are not covered by an imprimatur, whereas Bill Richer states at the end of the list of promises that they are covered by two imprimaturs.

Regardless, God will grant anything we ask Him, if it be consistent with His will. Matthew 21:22: “And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”

The Management

The prayers take about fifteen minutes to say properly, without rushing. So I settled into my chair and focussed on the words looking at me from the page.

They dwell on the suffering Christ endured before and during his Passion. I read of His being nailed to the Cross with big, blunt nails, being stretched out and pulled from all sides, and having His limbs dislocated. Yet He was able to forget His sufferings and pray instead for His enemies, saying: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

After fifteen minutes of immersion in the acute suffering of Our Savior, I felt really embarrassed about wanting to sleep in the spare room because of one hurtful comment. If Christ could go through all that agony for my sake, maybe I could swallow my pride and abandon my foolishness?

At least I hadn’t yet told my husband that I was slinking off in anger and was saved from having to take back those words!

The St. Bridget prayers proved so useful that day. They were long enough to give me time to simmer down, and described Christ’s sufferings in sufficiently graphic detail to put my own in perspective.

I highly recommend these prayers for those times when you feel a festering resentment towards someone and want to get even. They really work! Pray them with real fervor and you'll get a sense of peace and reconciliation.

 











Epilogue: Value of Suffering


As Bill Richer writes, below the prayers on that linked page:  "With your sufferings, others who would ordinarily not be saved will be saved!"’

None of us enjoys our sufferings, but by offering them up for the salvation of souls, we can use them for good and rejoice in being able to do so.


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Good Friday: A Chance to Help Christ Carry His Cross?

4/6/2012

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Good Friday

Christ was crucified today. For our sake, He endured being beaten and whipped. He was then made to carry His own cross all the way to Calvary, where He was nailed to the heavy wooden structure and left to die the slow, agonizing and suffocating death of crucifixion.

It was such a horrific way to die that the Romans didn’t even inflict on their own people when they were sentenced to death.

An Unexpected Cross

This past week I was dealt a heavy spiritual blow and my immediate reaction was to feel sorry for myself. I cried whenever I was alone, and every time I was in church. The situation should eventually resolve itself, but instead of focusing on that, I kept asking myself “supposing it doesn’t?”
 
Surely it is no accident that this happened to me shortly before Good Friday? Here was Christ, giving me a cross to bear, one which isn’t even remotely comparable to what He endured, just before our commemoration of His horrible death.

And was I bearing my cross cheerfully? Was I accepting my opportunity to grow in faith?  No!

My God, why Have You Abandoned Me?

I felt very alone in my situation. 

In my own mind I was doomed: I couldn’t look forward to going to Heaven because of unresolved issues in my spiritual life and I looked at others in Church with bitterness because they were going to Heaven. 
 
Everything earthly lost its appeal, and now that I felt threatened with losing God, He became the most important thing to me - as He should always have been!

In short, I was perilously close to committing the ultimate sin of despair.
 
The Road Back Home

With tremendous help from my parish priest, who is giving me great spiritual guidance, my mindset became positive again.
 
His first point was that God loves me, and that I should look to the good things that had just happened in my life. The return of my Mother back to the church, in answer to my prayers, and my son’s amazing Church attendance because of my example, were both huge proofs that God has not abandoned me. Far from it!

But he emphasized that God listens to the prayers of the humble, and that I needed to maintain humility when asking for God’s help with my current situation.

Moving Forward with Faith

I understood how easily I could have been feeling proud because of ‘my successes’ with my mother and my son, and how I’d probably been giving myself credit for God’s work in them. Instead, I should have been grateful that He allowed me to be His instrument. That was the first lesson in humility.

The second was that I should joyfully accept God’s cross for me. I should be humbly happy that He was testing my faith, and giving me an opportunity to grow in love for Him.
 
In his book I Believe in Love, Father D’Elbée said that when Christ gives us a cross to bear, He is allowing us to relieve Him - just a little bit - of
the weight of His own cross. How can I be upset at being given the chance to do that? How can I feel He doesn’t care about me, when He’s inviting me to help Him?
 
When we look at Christ hanging on the cross this Good Friday, we should ask ourselves, how can we – in our own small ways - relieve Him of His  suffering?

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    Hilary Walker

    A fanatic horse rider and writer of Christian Inspirational Fiction, who's beginning to understand that making it to Heaven is a tad more important than winning at horse shows.

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