Things to do today

Die (to your old self),
That is what Jesus did when He embraced His humanity.
May you decide to give up what you used to think you would never have been able to give up.


Rest (from your work),
After all the work that Jesus did, He rested on this Sabbath.
May you take time to breathe and remember why we're doing all the work we do.

Prepare (for your new life),
When He rose, His work extended to the ends of the world.
May you make plans to become His instrument in the world out there.

Happy Holy Saturday.

Do you desire Him?

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Lk 22:15). With these words Jesus began the celebration of his final meal and the institution of the Holy Eucharist. Jesus approached that hour with eager desire. In his heart he awaited the moment when he would give himself to his own under the appearance of bread and wine. He awaited that moment which would in some sense be the true messianic wedding feast: when he would transform the gifts of this world and become one with his own, so as to transform them and thus inaugurate the transformation of the world. In this eager desire of Jesus we can recognize the desire of God himself – his expectant love for mankind, for his creation. A love which awaits the moment of union, a love which wants to draw mankind to itself and thereby fulfil the desire of all creation, for creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the children of God (cf.Rom 8:19). Jesus desires us, he awaits us. But what about ourselves? Do we really desire him? Are we anxious to meet him? Do we desire to encounter him, to become one with him, to receive the gifts he offers us in the Holy Eucharist? Or are we indifferent, distracted, busy about other things?



- from Pope Benedict XVI's homily at the Mass of the Lord's Supper, held today at the Basilica of St. John Lateran

Thanks for the grace the Lord has given me (a sharing by Alphonsus Josemaria Soh)

[It] has been a struggling season for me because the fight with self weakness and self pleasures it always there and I see in this season it gets more difficult and becomes very real that I need God more then my wants, things that I seek, the temporal pleasures and happiness.

But I draw strength from Jesus through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass everyday, through the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, recitation of the Holy Rosary seeking intercession from our Blessed Mother, recitation of the Divine Mercy and lastly Fasting from food to unite my little suffering with those who don't have food.

All these little acts or penance I do, [I do it] through the grace the Lord has given. [If I tried to do] it by my own strength, definitely I [would not have made] it because the "God" element [would not have been] part of the process. Truly, I can say I see the fruits in this labour that I work with God, as mention in scripture: "You will be able to tell them by their fruits" (Mt 7:16).

Lastly for those who are struggling with your Lenten commitments united it with our Lord and don't lose heart and allow the devil to cheat us in any way. Remember to ask our Blessed Mother to give us graces and the strength to carry on.

Celebrating the Easter Triduum

[Today we mark] the beginning of the Easter Triduum, the three days in which the Church commemorates the mystery of the Lord's passion, death and resurrection.

The liturgies of these days invite us to ponder the loving obedience of Christ who, having become like us in all things but sin, resisted temptation and freely surrendered himself to the Father's will.

[At] the Chrism Mass, priests renew their ordination promises, the sacred oils are blessed, and we celebrate the grace of the crucified and risen Lord which comes to us through the Church's sacramental life.

On the evening of Holy Thursday, the Mass of the Lord's Supper begins the actual Triduum and recalls the institution of the sacraments of the Eucharist and Holy Orders.

The Liturgy of Good Friday invites us to share in Christ's sufferings through penance and fasting, and to receive the gift of God's love flowing from the Lord's pierced Heart.

The Easter Vigil joyfully proclaims Christ's resurrection from the dead and the new life received in Baptism.

By our prayers and our sharing in these liturgies, let us resolve to imitate Christ's loving obedience to the Father's saving plan, which is the source of authentic freedom and the path of eternal life.



- Pope Benedict XVI, Wednesday Audience (20 Apr), St Peter's Square

By one death and resurrection the world was saved

When mankind was estranged from him by disobedience, God our Saviour made a plan for raising us from our fall and restoring us to friendship with himself. According to this plan Christ came in the flesh, he showed us the gospel way of life, he suffered, died on the cross, was buried and rose from the dead. He did this so that we could be saved by imitation of him, and recover our original status as sons of God by adoption.

To attain holiness, then, we must not only pattern our lives on Christ’s by being gentle, humble and patient, we must also imitate him in his death. Taking Christ for his model, Paul said that he wanted to become like him in his death in the hope that he too would be raised from death to life.

We imitate Christ’s death by being buried with him in baptism. If we ask what this kind of burial means and what benefit we may hope to derive from it, it means first of all making a complete break with our former way of life, and our Lord himself said that this cannot be done unless a man is born again. In other words, we have to begin a new life, and we cannot do so until our previous life has been brought to an end. When runners reach the turning point on a racecourse, they have to pause briefly before they can go back in the opposite direction. So also when we wish to reverse the direction of our lives there must be a pause, or a death, to mark the end of one life and the beginning of another.

Our descent into hell takes place when we imitate the burial of Christ by our baptism. The bodies of the baptised are in a sense buried in the water as a symbol of their renunciation of the sins of their unregenerate nature. As the Apostle says: The circumcision you have undergone is not an operation performed by human hands, but the complete stripping away of your unregenerate nature. This is the circumcision that Christ gave us, and it is accomplished by our burial with him in baptism. Baptism cleanses the soul from the pollution of worldly thoughts and inclinations:  You will wash me, says the psalmist, and I shall be whiter than snow. We receive this saving baptism only once because there was only one death and one resurrection for the salvation of the world, and baptism is its symbol.



- St Basil, bishop

Do you fear silence?

Sometimes when you first get to a restaurant for a meal it’s nice and quiet. It’s easy to talk to your friends. It’s relaxing. It’s peaceful. Then a few hours later you all of a sudden realize that you’ve been yelling at each other for the past hour, your voice is getting sore and you can hardly hear each other anymore.

You look up and notice it’s the same thing at every table around you. Dishes clang in the kitchen. Some music you can barely make out blares from the ether. Waiters quickly dodge each other. A tray full of drinks crashes to the floor. The kitchen door slams. A hungry mob has formed by the door, sipping drinks and complaining about the wait. The bottle of wine in front of you is empty.

All of a sudden it is so noisy you can hardly hear yourself speak…let alone anybody else.

Such is our life. We can remember quieter times. We started out whispering. But now all of a sudden our voices are feeling a bit tired. We’ve already been yelling for quite some time. And we can’t remember when the whispering ended and the yelling began.

Why? Just like in the restaurant, the background noise has incrementally crept up without us realizing it. And now we’re yelling.

I remember when I was a kid wanting to listen to the radio really loudly. I would crank up the volume and rock-out. My parents, recognizing immediately that the volume was too loud, would then make me turn it down.

So what did I do? I would wait a few minutes, of course, and then bump up the volume just a tiny bit. And when nobody noticed that, I would do it again a few minutes later. With a little patience, I was back to full rocking-out volume - at least for a little while.

The World does the same thing. It loves noise and preys on our fear of silence. It will slowly swallow us up. And if we don’t stay alert, we will happily let it.

Holy Week (and Lent in general) is the perfect time to hit the reset button on the noise. Reset your noise floor. Cultivate the silence. Sit in its classroom. Prepare ourselves to receive Christ at Easter.

“Silence presents both sides of the Christian challenge. Firstly, silence introduces us to ourselves - our faults, failings, flaws, defects, talents, abilities, and potential. And secondly, silence introduces us to God - greatness, fidelity, and perfection. It is these two discoveries together - self and God - that propose the Christian challenge. Seeing ourselves as we are, and God as He is, we are always challenged to change, to grow, and to become more like God."



Thanks to by Matthew Warner from National Catholic Register

Plan harassers (a sharing by Priscilla Chua)

Some evil man has been harassing my plants and it has been going on for a while. Today I found my aloe vera plant uprooted and left to die. I was feeling very annoyed and really surprised that there are people out there who has so much time on their hands to mess up my plants. But amazingly, I felt a little wave of forgiveness towards the culprit as well. I don't know who he is and why is he doing that but that's not going to stop me from continuing to water my plants more consistently and shower more love.

Then I had this inspiration - is this how God view and care for His people especially if they've sinned and strays away? I think so... God will stick closer to His children and make sure that He keeps evil at bay, never giving up on each one of his us.

Call me crazy but before leaving I had a little session of assurance and affirmations with the plants (however one-sided it may sound, it's proven that plants grow better when people talk/sing to them!). I told them they have to stay strong and I promise I do what I can to keep them growing. But we can't do it without the Lord's help and protection so it's going to be team effort.

Pope Benedict XVI's Palm Sunday homily

It is a moving experience each year on Palm Sunday as we go up the mountain with Jesus, towards the Temple, accompanying him on his ascent. On this day, throughout the world and across the centuries, young people and people of every age acclaim him, crying out: “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”

But what are we really doing when we join this procession as part of the throng which went up with Jesus to Jerusalem and hailed him as King of Israel? Is this anything more than a ritual, a quaint custom? Does it have anything to do with the reality of our life and our world? To answer this, we must first be clear about what Jesus himself wished to do and actually did. After Peter’s confession of faith in Caesarea Philippi, in the northernmost part of the Holy Land, Jesus set out as a pilgrim towards Jerusalem for the feast of Passover. He was journeying towards the Temple in the Holy City, towards that place which for Israel ensured in a particular way God’s closeness to his people. He was making his way towards the common feast of Passover, the memorial of Israel’s liberation from Egypt and the sign of its hope of definitive liberation. He knew that what awaited him was a new Passover and that he himself would take the place of the sacrificial lambs by offering himself on the cross. He knew that in the mysterious gifts of bread and wine he would give himself for ever to his own, and that he would open to them the door to a new path of liberation, to fellowship with the living God. He was making his way to the heights of the Cross, to the moment of self-giving love. The ultimate goal of his pilgrimage was the heights of God himself; to those heights he wanted to lift every human being.

Our procession today is meant, then, to be an image of something deeper, to reflect the fact that, together with Jesus, we are setting out on pilgrimage along the high road that leads to the living God. This is the ascent that matters. This is the journey which Jesus invites us to make. But how can we keep pace with this ascent? Isn’t it beyond our ability? Certainly, it is beyond our own possibilities. From the beginning men and women have been filled – and this is as true today as ever – with a desire to “be like God”, to attain the heights of God by their own powers. All the inventions of the human spirit are ultimately an effort to gain wings so as to rise to the heights of Being and to become independent, completely free, as God is free. Mankind has managed to accomplish so many things: we can fly! We can see, hear and speak to one another from the farthest ends of the earth. And yet the force of gravity which draws us down is powerful. With the increase of our abilities there has been an increase not only of good. Our possibilities for evil have increased and appear like menacing storms above history. Our limitations have also remained: we need but think of the disasters which have caused so much suffering for humanity in recent months.

The Fathers of the Church maintained that human beings stand at the point of intersection between two gravitational fields. First, there is the force of gravity which pulls us down – towards selfishness, falsehood and evil; the gravity which diminishes us and distances us from the heights of God. On the other hand there is the gravitational force of God’s love: the fact that we are loved by God and respond in love attracts us upwards. Man finds himself betwixt this twofold gravitational force; everything depends on our escaping the gravitational field of evil and becoming free to be attracted completely by the gravitational force of God, which makes us authentic, elevates us and grants us true freedom.

Following the Liturgy of the Word, at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer where the Lord comes into our midst, the Church invites us to lift up our hearts: “Sursum corda!” In the language of the Bible and the thinking of the Fathers, the heart is the centre of man, where understanding, will and feeling, body and soul, all come together. The centre where spirit becomes body and body becomes spirit, where will, feeling and understanding become one in the knowledge and love of God. This is the “heart” which must be lifted up. But to repeat: of ourselves, we are too weak to lift up our hearts to the heights of God. We cannot do it. The very pride of thinking that we are able to do it on our own drags us down and estranges us from God. God himself must draw us up, and this is what Christ began to do on the cross. He descended to the depths of our human existence in order to draw us up to himself, to the living God. He humbled himself, as today’s second reading says. Only in this way could our pride be vanquished: God’s humility is the extreme form of his love, and this humble love draws us upwards.

Psalm 24, which the Church proposes as the “song of ascent” to accompany our procession in today’s liturgy, indicates some concrete elements which are part of our ascent and without which we cannot be lifted upwards: clean hands, a pure heart, the rejection of falsehood, the quest for God’s face. The great achievements of technology are liberating and contribute to the progress of mankind only if they are joined to these attitudes – if our hands become clean and our hearts pure, if we seek truth, if we seek God and let ourselves be touched and challenged by his love. All these means of “ascent” are effective only if we humbly acknowledge that we need to be lifted up; if we abandon the pride of wanting to become God. We need God: he draws us upwards; letting ourselves be upheld by his hands – by faith, in other words – sets us aright and gives us the inner strength that raises us on high. We need the humility of a faith which seeks the face of God and trusts in the truth of his love.

The question of how man can attain the heights, becoming completely himself and completely like God, has always engaged mankind. It was passionately disputed by the Platonic philosophers of the third and fourth centuries. For them, the central issue was finding the means of purification which could free man from the heavy load weighing him down and thus enable him to ascend to the heights of his true being, to the heights of divinity. Saint Augustine, in his search for the right path, long sought guidance from those philosophies. But in the end he had to acknowledge that their answers were insufficient, their methods would not truly lead him to God. To those philosophers he said: recognize that human power and all these purifications are not enough to bring man in truth to the heights of the divine, to his own heights. And he added that he should have despaired of himself and human existence had he not found the One who accomplishes what we of ourselves cannot accomplish; the One who raises us up to the heights of God in spite of our wretchedness: Jesus Christ who from God came down to us and, in his crucified love, takes us by the hand and lifts us on high.

We are on pilgrimage with the Lord to the heights. We are striving for pure hearts and clean hands, we are seeking truth, we are seeking the face of God. Let us show the Lord that we desire to be righteous, and let us ask him: Draw us upwards! Make us pure! Grant that the words which we sang in the processional psalm may also hold true for us; grant that we may be part of the generation which seeks God, “which seeks your face, O God of Jacob” (cf. Ps 24:6). Amen.



- Palm Sunday homily of his holiness Pope Benedict XVI on 17 April 2011 at St Peter's Square.

The agony of victory and the thrill of defeat

The readings for Palm Sunday dramatically depict the thrill of Christ’s victorious entrance into Jerusalem, His agony in the garden, and His apparent defeat on the Cross, taking us to the cusp of His stunning victory over the grave. Those events weren’t, of course, matters of sport and entertainment, but of life and death, damnation and salvation. And they contain a wealth of paradox, filled with seemingly apparent contradictions that can only make sense because they are supernatural. They are, [in another words], part of the foolishness of God that is wiser than the wisdom of men (cf., 1 Cor 1:25).

If the Incarnation is incomprehensible, the death of the God-man on the Cross is simply incredible, an audacious act of sacrificial love freely accepted by the One who is and who knows perfect Love. The Cross is not the end, but the beginning, the start of a new creation and the birth of the Church. It is not the final destruction of a life, but the only source of everlasting life.

The Easter liturgy of the Eastern Churches continually returns to a simple refrain of paradoxical joy: “By death He conquered death.” G.K. Chesterton, a master of paradox, had a character in the novel The Ball and the Cross put it this way: “The cross cannot be defeated … for it is Defeat.” Here is the true thrill of victory, not snatched from the jaws of defeat, but in and through the jaws of death. It is because of this that God exalted Christ Jesus, so that every tongue will confess that He is Lord.

Here is a final paradox to ponder: those who should recognize the Messiah often do not, while those who have little status or knowledge often do recognize Him. Judas, who lived with Christ for three years, betrayed Him to the chief priests, whose place and power blinds them to identity of the man from Nazareth. The lowly crowds, however, sang “Hosanna!”, and the Roman solders—accustomed to seeing death—exclaimed, at the foot of the Cross, “Truly, this was the Son of God!”

Perhaps this supernatural paradox could be called the agony of victory and the thrill of defeat.



Thanks to Carl Olsen for Ignatius Insight Scoop.