Our Lady's Lamp

The heart is the part of the body that is responsible for spreading life to every other part. Without the heart pumping blood, no other part can survive. It is also the part of the body the soul is personified as. "Heart" implies totality, the core of essense, and so much more. It is the life and love giving portion of the body. If one offers his heart to a person, he is offering everything to that person - his love, his emotions, his sufferings, his joys, his weaknesses, his strengths, and the promise that as long as that heart still beats, he will be true to that person. Every beat of our Lord's Sacred Heart was for us. He only took a physical heart for us, and from the moment in started beating, every beat was for us. The heart beating in the body of the infant Lord is the same heart that beat in the chest of our crucified Lord. It beat for one reason and one purpose - a love for us so deep that he would cover us all with his blood. This love consumed his heart...

Today is the Feast of the Visitation - when Mary, newly gifted with the miracle of the God-child, goes to visit her elderly cousin, Elizabeth who was also miraculously pregnant. From the moment of Mary's Fiat , Jesus was within her, the Word was flesh - growing flesh, true, but flesh. The God that made the universe was living and being fashioned a human body inside of a young Jewish girl.  Mary, filled with joy (and probably a bit scared too), goes to see her cousin and help her through the last trimester, which, for an older woman would be difficult even in our current day of comfort. Mary went and greeted her cousin, and as soon as she did, the Child growing in her womb was made known to the still young John, and he - as David did hundreds of years before - leaped for joy at being in the presence of God. The very first person to ever leap for joy, to worship Jesus (besides His Mother by offering her life) was an unborn child. That unborn child was the first missionary - he to...

Today, we in America celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (the technical feast day was Thursday). Jesus, our Risen Lord, takes his body up to the Father so it can be glorified for all time as the Lamb that was slain upon the altar of Heaven, forever offering himself as restitution for our sins, forever allowing the blood from his hands, his feet, and his heart, wash the sinner's sins away and allowing his earthly body and heavenly spirit nourish and strengthen his body the Church. Forever, this Lamb sends forth the Spirit to those of us still living upon the earth. You might think it's strange to think of our Risen Lord as a slain lamb, and I did too, until I began listening to an amazing CD by Scott Hahn (Title: Understanding the Eucharist), and he talked about Revelation 5 - a chapter I had never really paid much attention to in a book I used only for references (not a great way to use any book of the Bible, much less this most beautiful one that deserves...

Guess what, everone? Jesus is risen! He suffered and subjected himself to a horrible death, He remained with the dead for three days, and now He's risen! And just like He suffered, my Big Brother also rose for me. No more do I have to fear death. Death is not something, as in the Old Testament, to be feared or embraced only reluctantly. I can now look forward to the day I die because it is not, as good Gandalf says, the end but "just the beginning." My time here, in my earthly flesh, will be over, but I will be given a new body, a glorious body, like the one Jesus wore from the grave. What does it mean to, as Paul says, have the hope of the resurrection? Well, if we die to our old selves and become slaves to Christ, then we can join the "Cloud of Witnesses" the author of Hebrews talks about. We will join our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Judah, Simeon, and the other Maccabean Brothers and Martyrs, Simeon and ...

Recently, Holy Week has become my favorite of all weeks because I finally understood the reason we celebrate Christmas, Easter, and the different events of the Lord's human life. It is so that we might walk through his life with Him and understand our lives in relation to His. When I began to understand this, I began to appreciate holidays a bit more, and I have made it a point to try to actually understand what happened and join myself with the events happening. Last year, the reality of it being my sin that scourged my Lover's precious flesh, crowned my Lord with a thorny mockery, and nailed my God to a horrible cross became very real to me - more real than it had been for years. When I watched The Passion of the Christ , I saw my sins blackening his eyes, riping his skin, pushing him down, and nailing him up. It was my sin that did each of those things. And it was my helping hand that was Simon carrying the cross, it was my serving heart that was Veronica wiping his face, an...

Before Jesus walked that painful road to Calvary, Jesus' body was subjected to scourging. This was not what was required by the Jews, yet he suffered it. He allowed his precious body not just to suffer a painful, humiliating death, but he allowed that perfect flesh to be shredded by a cruel whip. That blood which erased our sins, of which one drop was enough to save the whole world, was spilled from gashes torn into his body. Oh, Jesus , how can I ever praise you enough for the sacrifice you made for me. You allowed your precious body to be mutilated. Men who did not believe in you were allowed to take a harsh whip to your back and rip it open. This was not something the Jews called for, but you knew that this was necessary. Your back was already tender from the agony you experienced in the garden. Your ordeal left your whole body as though it was bruised, so each bite of the whip was even more painful. But you never cried out for the Father to take away this pain. You never b...

March 25, nine months before December 25, is the Feast of the Assumption. Christ did not begin his time on earth as a human at Christmas but when he entered the womb of Mary. It was then that “the Word became Flesh” (John 1:14), for life does not start at birth but at conception. One of the great geniuses of the way the Church Calender is set up is that this falls just before Passion week and Easter. To truly understand the upcoming events, the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord, we must understand – at least in part – the Incarnation. This was prophesied by Isaiah and heralded by an angel (Luke 2:26-38). God, the creator of all things, of the world, the animals, the plants, the angels, and us humans, to redeem us from our own sins and failures, left his glory and took up his residence in the womb of a young girl. This would have been very poignant to the Jews. For the first time since the losing of the Ark, the physical presence of God was with them. Without...