(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [15] LENT 2024 | Christ our pasch is Risen, let us rejoice. Hallelujah The last time she had touched her son, Mary was holding his dead body in her lap before his burial. Now she is embracing him, risen and full of new life. We can never fully understand the Resurrection, but we can ask for the grace to feel the joy of the risen Jesus. As we shared his sorrow and anguish, we seek to feel the great joy of the Risen one. The Gospels, so attentive to narrate the ..read more

(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [14] LENT 2024 | We adore you, Christ, and praise you; because on your holy cross you have redeemed the world ‘All is completed’. And he lowered his head and gave up his spirit. The hour has come, and while it can seem the hour of his greatest humiliation and deepest suffering, Jesus can still say, All is completed. It is his hour of humiliation and suffering, but it is also the hour of his confirmation, the hour of his glory, when he is lifted up and proclai ..read more

(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [13] LENT 2024 | I have desired to eat this meal with you Today we are given total access to the heart of Jesus: we hear him expressing his consolation at being able to share this meal with his friends. He washes their feet, and then gives them, and us, the Eucharist so that he can remain with us forever. He then walks to the Garden of Gethsemane where he struggles to accept his passion, but at the end is able to say, Yet not what I will, but what you will. W ..read more

(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [12] LENT 2024 | Let it be done to me according to your will Today we enter Holy Week, the week when we celebrate the most important truths of our faith, the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus. Some of us can find this intensity somewhat confusing – too much happening and too much emotion in such a short time, especially while the rest of our life keeps its usual rhythm. For Jesus too these must have been confusing, highly emotional days. The g ..read more

(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [10] LENT 2024 | I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart (Ps 40:8) I desire neither life nor death. Were the Lord to offer me a choice, I would not choose. I will only what he wills, and I am pleased with whatever he does. I have no fear of the last struggle, or of any pain, however great, which my illness may bring. God has always been my help; he has led me by the hand since I was a child, and I count on him now. Even though sufferin ..read more

(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [9] LENT 2024 | Like Solomon, seek a listening heart With King Solomon, David’s successor, the kingdom of Israel was at the height of its power, stability and influence among its neighbours. God appeared to Solomon (1 Kings 3:5-15) and told him, Whatever you ask I shall give you’. He was asking him, ‘In your situation, what do you really seek?’ Solomon, well aware of the heavy responsibilities he was carrying as king of a big people, gave a very clear answer ..read more

(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [8] LENT 2024 | I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! Jesus too had strong desires, and his search was wholly passionate. These words in the gospel of Luke (12: 49) give us a glimpse into Jesus’ heart. He is sharing what he is seeking: to set the world on fire with the good news that we have a merciful Father who sends his rain and sunshine equally on the good and the bad. Moreover, Jesus is telling us how much he would ..read more

(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [7] LENT 2024 | The ‘prayer of incompetence’, or the widow’s mite I came across this phrase many years ago in Cardinal Basil Hume’s book, Searching for God, and I still find it a very consoling and inspiring phrase. Hume says that we might read a book about prayer, hear someone describe an excellent method of prayer, and we are all excited. Yet, when we go to pray, we discover ourselves to be totally incompetent: “Often we find ourselves … in what we term the ..read more

(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [6] LENT 2024 | As I enter into prayer I ask for what I desire This is a suggestion we often come across in the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius. At different stages of the retreat he suggests that I ask for what I desire, with insistence. As I advance in the retreat, Ignatius suggests I ask for sorrow for my sins, for the strong desire to change, and later to know Jesus intimately so that I may love him more and follow him closely.  In contemplating th ..read more

(Traduzione in italiano ed albanese in fondo alla pagina – This blog post is also translated into Italian and Albanian – please scroll) [5] LENT 2024 | Ask for humility The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector.’ (Lk 18: 9-14) These chilling words of the Pharisee’s prayer help us understand why Teresa of Avila advises us to pray for humility if we want our prayer to be true. Through prayer I seek contact with God, allowing him to be God in my life. Yet if I believe I can claim s ..read more