During his brief homily at an April 2 Mass at the chapel of St. Marta’s Residence, Pope Francis encouraged the faithful to pray to God for the gift of tears, to imitate Mary Magdalene during this Easter season. Addressing various members of the Vatican gendarmerie and other Vatican workers present for the Mass, the Holy Father mediated on the passage about the “sinful” woman who wept upon seeing the empty tomb. Mary Magdalene, he said, is the woman “whom Jesus said had loved much and therefore her sins were forgiven.” However, she had to “confront the loss of all her hopes” in not finding Jesus, and for this reason she wept. “All of us have felt joy, sadness and sorrow in our lives,” but “have we wept during the darkest moment? Have we had that gift of tears that prepare the eyes to look, to see the Lord?” the Pope asked. “We too can ask the Lord for the gift of tears,” he said. “It is a beautiful grace…to weep praying for everything: for what is good, for our sins, for graces, for joy itself.” Weeping, the Holy Father explained, “prepares us to see Jesus. It is the Lord," he said, “who gives us the grace, to all, to be able to say with our lives, ‘I have seen the Lord,’ not because he has appeared, but because ‘I have seen him in my heart.’ And this should be the testimony of our lives: ‘I live this way because I have seen the Lord.’”
Kurt Hilgefort, is a Catholic father of six who publishes his thoughts on his blog Shadows of Augustine . He responded to my seven question survey with the following answers. Kurt is the first layperson to respond to the seven question survey and I think that his experience is extremely relevant to me personally and I hope that you are inspired by his thoughts as well. If you would like to respond, please send an email to fellmananthony@gmail.com with your thoughts and I will be happy to publish them as well. 1. What is the biggest challenge to your faith that you have faced so far? The biggest challenge for me has been the whole dying to self thing. On an intellectual level, there are no barriers. It comes down to a matter of accepting the authority of the Church that Christ founded upon Peter. My challenge is not in the intellect, but rather in the will. The challenge for me has always been to continually seek conversion. I want to be transformed, but I want it to be over all ...
