These monologues were written by Sister the year before she entered the monastery. She hopes they will help you in your own meditation and prayer on this day dedicated to accompanying Christ in His sufferings. May the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ be ever in our hearts!
Read MoreAt the last supper, Jesus offered up His Body and Blood in sacrifice “for you” (see Luke 22:19). I allow those two little words to echo in my own heart: for me … Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection … for me. The Gospel accounts of Christ’s Passion give us seven sayings or seven “words” that Jesus spoke from the Cross, and I hear the “for you” spoken by Jesus at the Last Supper re-echoed there.
Read MoreSt. Augustine is famous for saying, among other things, that the New Testament is concealed in the Old and the Old revealed in the New … Several years ago, I first came upon what was for me a particularly poignant foreshadowing of Christ’s Passion, hidden within the depths of the Book of Leviticus.
Read MoreThe arms and heart of Jesus Crucified are wide open to receive us all. It is good to be here with Mary, so good. Yet how can we be glad, how can we lift up songs of rejoicing, here of all places? What place can joy possibly have on Calvary?
Read MoreIn God’s infinite generosity and love, He gives us the dignity of “making up for what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, on behalf of His body, the Church” by the sufferings of our lives. Nothing is wasted! The first person to share in the sufferings of Christ was His Mother Mary. As we ponder the Passion and seek to be united with Jesus, Mary’s Mother-heart gives us a unique entryway into the sufferings of Christ.
Read MoreA number of Psalms are particularly applicable to the Passion and Death of Our Lord. They contain some of the more poignant descriptions of physical, psychological, and spiritual suffering, as well as powerful prayers of trust and even prophecies of specific elements of the Passion narrative. The most famous of these is, of course, Psalm 22.
Read MoreIn His infinite mercy, God has come down to our level in Jesus Christ, embracing human weakness in order to win for us the graces – and give us an example to imitate – in every challenge we face. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Passion, where He chooses to exercise His omnipotence precisely through weakness.
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