Palm Sunday always sets such a beautiful beginning to the holiest of weeks. As we draw our Lenten season to a close and begin the Triduum on Thursday, I am reminded of the sacrifice of our Lord. Yesterday's Gospel reading always reveals something new to me or perhaps I notice something new as a focus area. In the end, it is God who is placing new insights before me. Yesterday it was the Lord asking that His Father allow the chore of the crucifixion to pass Him by. Reading the words triggered the image of our Lord suffering on the cross. The imagery took me to the foot of the cross looking up at Jesus. The sacrifice is enormous but realizing that He is God and could have just as easily chosen another way truly defines the magnitude of the event. It is the ultimate display of obedience. It is what God asks of all of us. God sacrificed His son for us. The immeasurable depths of the love it takes to do something like that is almost unimaginable. But of course, trying to measure it would place limits on God in human ways and He is not constrained in that way. God is so much greater than any human measurement or expectation. He is! I encourage you to take part in the Triduum masses this Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They are some of the most beautiful and tranformative celebrations the Church offers us. You cannot help but be moved by the adoration of the cross or the reenactment of the washing of the feet. Easter vigil literally defines anticipation and hope. It is a consuming need that has grown in us over the last 40 days of fast and preparation. And so the week begins.
The spiritual climax of the Gospel of John, as Father John Waiss points out, occurs at the foot of the Cross, where Jesus utters his parting words: “Woman, behold, your son!” and “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26-27). While these words were addressed to the Apostle John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, the Church has long understood this moment as a universal adoption. To truly image Christ, we must share in His parentage; if we embrace God as our spiritual Father but reject Mary as our mother, we treat Christ as a half-brother rather than our "firstborn among many brethren" (Rom. 8:29). As Origen noted as early as the third century, the profound depths of the Gospel are only accessible to those who, like John, rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and receive Mary into their own homes. This maternal role is deeply rooted in biblical typology, positioning Mary as the fulfillment of the great mothers of the Old Covenant. She is the New Eve , the mother of all the living according ...
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