Sunday, February 04, 2007

Mary's Passion


My response to Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ was that it should have been called Mel Gibson's Pieta. Among the film's most heartrending and memorable scenes depicts Mary, her heart exploding with grief, wiping Jesus' blood from the stone pavement of the torture chamber where he had been scourged. The scene captures perfectly something what those who accompany their loved ones at the end of life experience to some degree, namely: the need to do something even when there is nothing one can do. What I am doing is writing this to you.

Suffering, writes Hans Urs von Balthasar, "is not entry into alienation, but an exit from it. On a deeper level, suffering is a participation in the suffering of the one who leads us out of alienation.”

Please keep Liz in your prayers.

3 comments:

MichaelJ said...

..and what we are doing now is through prayer commending you all to the mercy and love of God...

Mark Gordon said...

The vine from every living limb bleeds wine.
Is it the poorer for that spirit shed?
The drunken and the wanton drink thereof.
Are they the richer for that gift's excess?

Measure thy life by loss instead of gain,
Not by the wine drunk, but the wine poured forth;
For life's strength standeth in love's sacrifice,
And whoso suffers most hath most to give. -Ugo Bassi


The hearts of those who love and admire you are breaking along with yours. Please know of fervent prayers for Liz ... and you.

Tamquam Leo Rugiens said...

Every day.