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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My very dear sons,

Today, as it sometimes happens, we celebrate the solemnity of the Annunciation, under the glorious light of the Resurrection of Christ. How the brightness of the Risen Lord enhances today’s celebration! It seems that we find here a perfect blending of the two great facets of the Christian faith, Incarnation and Redemption. What was announced to Mary of Nazareth, concerning the child to be conceived in her virginal womb, finds in the empty Tomb of Easter and the glorified Body of Christ its full accomplishment.

At the dawn of History, when the world began, God uttered His multiple “fiat”, “Let there be” : “Let there be light…; Let there be a firmament…; Let the waters that are under heaven be gathered together…” (Gen. 1: […]

Resurrexi, et adhuc tecum sum…I arose, and am still with thee, Alleluia (Introit).

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

My very dear sons,

This day marks the moment when all things begin to rise. Not only does the Messiah, Our Lord, rise from the dead, but with Him and in Him the entire human race and the entire cosmos surge ineffably upwards, if such a thing can be said on such a scale. Nothing will ever be the same; the world will never again look like it did before Christ’s Resurrection, the great Paschal event at the center of History. We understand now that it was all the secret of the Father, His design from beginning, from the sad moment when Adam and Eve tumbled into sin, like Jack and Jill down […]

Before the festival day of the pasch, Jesus knowing that his hour was come, that he should pass out of this world to the Father: having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them unto the end (Jn 13:1)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

My very dear sons,

We find ourselves again this evening on the threshold of the sacred Triduum, the holiest days of Holy Week, at this solemn Mass of Maundy Thursday. We are here to commemorate the beginning of Our Lord’s Passion. But is this not something we have done before, many times? Is Maundy Thursday just an exercise we repeat year after year? Or is it not, rather, a unique mystery into which we enter—at least this is to be hoped—more intensely every time? […]

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
My Very Dear Sons,

When Saint Peter declared to the Lord that he and the other Apostles had “left all things” and followed Him, he could not have realized the immense consequences of his words. He certainly did not consider at that precise moment how thousands upon thousands of human beings in future times would imitate his example by giving up all their earthly possessions, in order to be more perfect followers of Christ. How could he have known in his day that hermits, monks and nuns would someday fill the desert places of earth like so many John the Baptists? Surely, it did not cross Peter’s mind on that particular occasion, as he spoke with Jesus in the land beyond the Jordan, that he was actually tracing a […]