From Death Into Life

As I attended the funeral of a very close cousin of mine who unexpectedly died from complications stemming from leukemia, I thought how Providential it was to occur during Holy Week.

How lovely it is that our God has given us the opposite road of Our Divine Saviour. Jesus was welcomed with palms into Jerusalem and THEN endured his Sorrowful Passion. We sometimes have to endure our own "passions" here on earth before WE are welcomed into the heavenly Jerusalem.

I think of my cousin in his final days, beaten and mocked with health problems, struggling to carry his cross to his own Golgotha - only to see it through on his own Palm Sunday welcoming into eternal life. I pray for his soul that by God's grace and mercy he can forgive him his transgressions and allow him to partake in the Eternal Mass.

Life is precious and so fragile. Endure your passions and know they only exist because God so wills it to purify you like gold.
Our Palm Sunday awaits, but not before our Passion.

"Jesus without the cross is a man without a mission and the cross without Jesus is a burden without a reliever."
- Archbishop Fulton Sheen

HE IS RISEN.

HE IS RISEN INDEED!