The View Up Here

Well you can't very well write about Good Friday and not write about Easter! I spent the weekend with a good friend in Binghamton, so am just getting around to writing a bit tonight. On my drive back from Binghamton, this prayer entered my heart: "Lord, let me see myself in the Light of Your Resurrection." Our ideas about our lives and our very personhood are too often determined by others, when the only Person who can speak who we are is God. A God who knows the realities of human existence, but who offers the final Word - LIFE. There is joy, humility and peace here. The joy of knowing that humanity is resurrected in Christ, and that by His stripes, I am healed.  I went to Easter Sunday Mass at my friend's church, and although I knew no one else besides my friend, I felt totally at home and welcomed. People had friendly faces and friendly spirits (oh that it were so in every Catholic parish!). But it soon became clear that we chose to sit near a family with ...

In my Good Friday tradition, I am starting my day with scripture. Yesterday at the Holy Thursday Mass of the Last Supper, we heard from the Gospel of John. Today, I'm reading the Gospel of Luke, in particular the Passion Narrative. Here's what has struck me this morning:  As they led him away they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country; and after laying the cross on him, they made him carry it behind Jesus.   (Lk 23:26) I realized after meditating on this passage that for most of my life, whenever I heard the phrase "take up your cross," it evoked an image of me dragging the impossibly heavy burdens of life around the world on my own, with Jesus far off on a hilltop, looking down and giving me the thumbs up sign. I know, that's ridiculous.  But really, in a culture that emphasizes individualism and self-reliance, it's not too surprising that this is how many of us think of "taking up our crosses."  Lik...

In the Gospel of John, Yeshua tenderly washes the apostles' feet, then sits down and asks them, "Do you know what I have done for you?" (Jn 13:12) At the time, Simon (Cephas/Peter) and the apostles didn't really catch on to what was  going  on. But eventually, they did. And so can we. Jesus (Yeshua)  has shown us that we are to be servant leaders; we are to serve our brothers and sisters in humility and love - just as He did. In Holy Thursday Mass, we have the "washing of the feet" to commemorate this act. But what does it really mean, and why did Jesus wash the disciples' feet, not  just  serve a meal or do some other act of service? We must do two things to unpack this gesture - one is the examine the physicality of it, and the other is to remember Jesus' time and place. Jesus took off his outer garment and wrapped a towel around his waist. Taking off an outer garment can symbolize getting ready to work (akin to "rolling up one'...