As we come to the end of our Lenten itinerary, we do not want to miss a glance at the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. What creature could better understand the suffering of her Son than the one who received the unspeakable grace of being His Mother and disciple? The traditional calendar dedicates the Friday before Holy Week to contemplating Mary’s sorrows. Read More
Showing all posts in March 2023
“THE LORD WILL GATHER ME UP”
288th Meditation
“Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will gather me up” (Ps 26:10).
Even the most bitter human suffering is sheltered in God’s hands. We could add to the words of the psalm: “Though all people reject me and point the finger at me, the Lord will take me in”. Read More
LENTEN ITINERARY | Day 37: Suffering and serenity
We are just 3 days away from the beginning of Holy Week, and our Lenten itinerary is coming to an end. I would like to dedicate today’s meditation to the theme of how to deal with suffering in the right way, which is undoubtedly one of the most difficult lessons in our journey of following Christ.
To address this issue, we will draw on an excellent meditation of Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene, O.C.D., from his book “Divine Intimacy”. Read More
I WILL NOT WAVER
287th Meditation
“I have trusted in the Lord without wavering” (Ps 26:1b).
Trust in our Father makes our life upright and secure. It anchors us in His heart and makes our God inclined to show us His love in a special way. Read More
SEND ME
286th Meditation
“Let me always find you on watch, so that I may count on you at all times” (Inner Word).
What an extensive invitation from our Father! Not only does He constantly surround us with His fatherly love and thus give us an eternal home, but He also wants to count on us. The friendship He offers us should not be one-sided, so that it is not only we who can entrust our Father with what is most intimate to us, but that He can also count on us and include us in His plans of salvation. Read More
LENTEN ITINERARY | Day 36: “Ecclesia in deserto”
We have already travelled a long way on our Lenten itinerary and now we are almost at the gates of Holy Week.
During the last five days we have been dealing with the serious subject of the Antichrist, who is to come at the End of Time, but whose spirit is already manifesting itself beforehand in various guises. Here we are confronted with the abyss of iniquity, a dark personification of the alienation from the living God. But in the end, as St. John’s Revelation describes, the Beast (often interpreted as an image of the Antichrist) and the False Prophet will be cast into the lake of fire (cf. Rev 20:9-10). Read More
THE CROWN OF LIFE
285th Meditation
“Be faithful unto death and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev 2:10).
These words are addressed by the glorified Lord to the “angel of the Church of Smyrna” in the Book of Revelation, calling us all to the generous surrender of our lives. Read More
LENTEN ITINERARY | Day 35: Following Christ in anti-Christian times (V)
Spiritual resistance to the anti-Christian threat
In our journey towards the great Feast of the Resurrection of Our Lord, we have dealt with the grave threat of the anti-Christian powers. These have even penetrated our Church, seeking to disintegrate and weaken her from within, so that she loses her clear and unequivocal witness and is no longer able to give true guidance to men. The more the Church adopts the “smell of this world”, the less she reflects the face of her Divine Bridegroom. Read More
TO HIM ALONE I BELONG
284th Meditation
“I come from God, My Father; to Him I return; to Him alone I belong” (Father’s Message to Sister Eugenia Ravasio).
Let us dwell today on the last part of this sentence of Father’s Message: “To Him alone I belong”.
The Father has given us this certainty, and we must repeat it again and again: “It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture” (Ps 99:3). Read More
LENTEN ITINERARY | Day 34: Following Christ in anti-Christian times (IV)
The crisis in the Church
If we take a critical look at the current situation in the Church, we can quickly focus on Germany, where a “different Church” is already manifesting itself in certain aspects. Those who follow more closely what is happening on the so-called “synodal way” can see that here a process of adaptation of the Church to the world is taking place. The Catholic identity is increasingly being renounced in order to adopt the moral standards of the world. Read More