By Love, with Love, in Love and to Love

​Our Lenten journey is one to deeper relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ, who
gives Himself to us. He gives Himself in an “extreme” way on the Cross. From
the outside, the Cross is tragedy. From the inside, from the divine vantage point,
because it is divine Love poured forth, the Cross is power and wisdom. St. Paul
says this in this Sunday’s second reading (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). Let us pray
for an increase in faith, that we might truly
proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness
to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
I offer you three quotes about the Cross, for your Lenten meditation:
God created through love and for love. God did not create anything except
love itself, and the means to love. He created love in all its forms. He
created beings capable of love from all possible distances. Because no
other could do it, he himself went to the greatest possible distance, the
infinite distance. This infinite distance between God and God, this supreme
tearing apart, this agony beyond all others, this marvel of love, is the
crucifixion.
Simone Weil (+1943), French social activist and mystic 
How precious the gift of the cross, how splendid to contemplate! In the
cross there is no mingling of good and evil, as in the tree of paradise: it is
wholly beautiful to behold and good to taste. The fruit of this tree is not
death but life, not darkness but light. This tree does not cast us out of
paradise, but opens the way for our return.
St. Theodore the Studite (+826), Byzantine Greek monk
There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no
enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear
that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with
us. And on the far side of every cross we find the newness of life in the
Holy Spirit, that new life which will reach its fulfillment in the resurrection.
This is our faith. This is our witness before the world.
Pope John Paul II
Journeying with you to deeper relationship with our Lord, Jesus Christ,
Fr. Dominique
fellow-pilgrim