The Best Christmas Present This Year

My dear friend (whom I shall call "The Ballerina") gave me an awesome Christmas gift this year, and I just had to show it too you!

ME!

Yup, no kidding. That is me! Here below is the original picture. \/

Didn't she do an amazing job? I mean, it looks just like the original photograph!!!! It is proudly displayed in my room. *big grin*

For those of you who don't know, that photo was taken of me when I was a member of the "Angry Mob" in my Theatre troup's performance of "The Seven Last Words of Christ" last March. An aside, I am glaring at "St. John" and the actress who played him said I really scared her with that look! (In our troupe 98% of the guy roles are played but us lovely young ladies.)

So I must say, that that drawing was by far my favorite gift this year!

Meditational Images for Holy Week

All photos copywright of Laura M. Dominick. Used with permission

Redemption through Suffering

The image of the crucified Christ, which is the focal point of the liturgy of Good Friday, makes us realize the true seriousness of human misery, human aloneness, human sin. Yet, throughout all the centuries of Church history, it has constantly been regarded as an image of consolation and hope. The Isenheim Altar of Matthias Grunewald, which is, prehaps the most moving painting of the crucifixtion to be found in all Christendom, was located in a monestary of the Antonian Hospitalers, who cared for victims of the terrible plauges that afflicted the West during the late Middle Ages. The crucified Jesus is depicted as one of these victims; his whole body is disfigured by the boils of bubonic plauge, the most terrible of the pestilence of that time ... This painting made them realize that precisely by reason of their sickness they were identified with the crucified Christ, who, by his suffering, had become one with all the suffering of history; they felt the presence of the Crucified One in their cross and knew that, in their distress, they were drawn into union with Christ and hence into the abyss of his eternal mercy. They experienced his cross as their redemption ... Instead of divine consolation, they want changes that will redeem suffering by removing it; not redemption through suffering, but redemption from suffering is their watchword; not expectation of divine assistance, but the humanization of man by man is their goal.

~Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XIV

The Seventh Word: It is fineshed

Lenten Transfiguration

Astonished in the presence of the transfigured Lord, who was speaking with Moses and Elias, Peter, James, and John were suddenly enveloped in a cloud from which a voice arose that proclaimed: "This is my beloved Son, listen to him". (Mk 9:7).

When one has the grace to sense a strong experience of God, it is as though seeing something similar to what the disciples experienced during the Transfiguration: For a moment they experienced ahead of time something that will constitute the happiness of paradise. In general, it is brief experiences that God grants on occasions, especiall in anticipation of harsh trials. However, no one lives "on Tabor" while on earth. Human existence is a journey of faith and, as such, goes forward more in darkness than in full light, with moments of obscurity and even profound darkness.

While we are here, our relationship with God develops more with listening than with seeing; and even contemplation takes place, so to speak, with closed eyes, thanks to the interior light lit in us by the word of God... This is the gift and commitment for each one of us in the Lenten season: to listen to Christ, like Mary. To listen to Him in the word, preserved in Sacred Scripture. To listen to Him in the very events of our lives, trying to read in them the messages of providence. To listen to Him, finally, our brothers, especially in the little ones and the poor, for whome Jesus himself asked our concrete love. To listen to Christ and to obey His voice. This is the only way to joy and love.

~ Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XIV

The Fifth Word: "I Thirst"

The Sixth Word: "Father, into Your hands, I commend My Spirit."

The Glad Tidings of the Cross

The content of the Christian evangelium reads: God finds man so important that He Himself has suffered for man. The cross is in truth the center of the evengelium, the glad tidings: "It is good that you exist" - no, "It is necessary that you exist." The cross is the approbation of our existence, not in words, but in an act so completely radical that is caused God to become flesh and pierced this flesh to the quick; that, to God, it was worth the death of His incarnate Son. One who is so loved that the other identifies his life with this love and no longer desires to live if he is deprived of it; one who is loved even unto death - such a one knows that he is truly loved. But if God so loves us, then we are loved in truth. Then love is truth, and truth is love. Then life is worth living. This is the evangelium. This is why, even as the message of the cross, it is glad tidings for one who believes; the only glad tidings tht destroy the ambiguity of all other joys and make them worthy ro be joyful. The "Rejoice!" with which it begins expresses its whole nature. By its very essence, by its very nature, Christian belief is "glad tidings" ... deep joy of the heart is also the true prerequisite for a sense of humor, and thus humor is, in a certain sense, the measure of faith.

~Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI

The Fourth Word: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?"

To learn as to why Latarae Sunday is also known as "Rose Sunday", click on the picture of the Rose

The Church and the Forty Days

The Church is being urged ever more loudly and insistently to exchange a distant and undreal redemption by the Word for a more robust redemption by bread and the sure path of politicization. Our experiance, then, is of a Church in the wilderness, a Church in her forty-day period. It is one of exposure to emptiness, to a world that seems, religously speaking, to have become wordless, imageless, soundless; exposure to a world in which the heavens over us are dark and distant and impalapable. And yet for us too and for the Church of our day this time in the wilderness can become a time of grace in which a new love can grow out of suffering induced by God's distance from us.
We often have the oppressive feeling that the manna of our faith will be enough only for the presant day - but God gives us that manna new each day if we allow him to do so. We must live in a world in which in God is seemingly to be found only as One who is dead - but He can strike living water even from dead stones.
A Church in her Lent, in her "forty days" in the wilderness. I believe that during this season of fasting we must hearten ourselves anew to accept our situation in patience and faith and to follow fearlessly after our hidden God. If we journey on in patient faith, then for us too a new day can dawn out of the darkness. And God's bright world, the lost world of images and sounds, will be restored to us again; there will be a new morning in God's good creation.

- Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI

The Third Word of Christ ~ "Woman, behold thy son. Behold thy mother."

Announcing the Upcoming Preformance of...

THE SEVEN LAST WORDS OF CHRIST

written by Thoedore Dubois

Directed by Simonetta Pacek

Sung by the Passion and Most Blessed Sacrament Choirs

Accompanied by a beautiful Orchestra

and

Preformed by the Little Flowers Catholic Dance and Theater Troupe

"The Seven Last Words of Christ" consists of Christ's 7 last phrases from the Cross (e.g.: "Father, why have you forsaken me?"). The work is a sacred, classical masterpiece, written for an orchestra, chorus, and vocal soloists. The Troupe will create a complimentary live theatrical setting for the musical work, with actors and visual effects. This is a lovely and moving, Lenten meditation.

For Tickets and more information, visit the Little Flowers Catholic Dance and Theater Troupe website.

Forty Days of Preparation

In the forty days of the preparation fo Easter, we endeavor to get away from the heathenism that wieghs us down, that is always driving us away from God, and we set off toward Him once again. So, too, at the beginning of the Eucharist, in the confession of sin, we are always trying to take up this path again, to set out, to go to the mountain of God's word and God's presence... We must learn that it is only in the silent, barely noticeable things that what is great takes place, that man becomes God's image and the world once more becomes the radiance of God's glory.

Let us ask the Lord to give us a receptivity to His gentle presence; let us ask Him to help us not to be so deafened and desensitized by this world's loud outcry that our receptivity fails to register Him. Let us ask Him that we may hear His quiet voice, go with Him, and be of service together with Him and in His way, so that His kingdom may become present in this world ... We imitate God, we live by God, like God, by entering into Christ's manner of life. He has climbed down from His divine being and become one of us; He has given Himself and does so continually... It is be these little daily virtues, again and again, that we step out of our bitterness, our anger toward others, our refusal to accept the other's forgiveness. This "littleness" is the concrete form of our being like Chirst and living like God, imitting God; He has given Himself to us so that we can give ourselves to Him and to one another.

~ Benedictus: Day by Day with Pope Benedict XVI

The First Word of Christ "Father, forgive them, for the know not what they do."

The Second Word of Christ "This day you shall be with me in paradise."