STRIPPED

 

“Before He is nailed to the cross, Jesus gives us yet another overwhelming showing of His love, yet another proof of His identification with men in their bitterest humiliation: Jesus is stripped of His garments.

It is hard to bring oneself to reflect on this, yet it is necessary because of what every detail of this dreadful incident can mean to men today.  With all the wounds on His body, the wounds of the scourging, of the falls on the way to Calvary, of the heaviness and the roughness of the cross on His shoulder, Christ’s garments must have been stiff with blood and adhering to His body.  The soldiers would not have treated Him tenderly, although there is no reason to suppose they were fundamentally cruel.  They would undoubtedly have torn His clothes from Him as quickly as they could and as roughly as they must.  It would have been almost as if His skin was being torn off Him.

There, exposed in His nakedness, He stood in front of the whole mob – and, which must have been far harder to bear, in front of those whom He loved, His mother; John, His chosen friend; Mary Magdalen, who washed His feet with her tears.  He stood naked.

He was stripped there on the summit of Calvary not to reveal His sacred body in its perfection.  He was the fairest of the sons of men; no other men had ever had, or ever would have, a body approaching His in perfection; but it was exposed to the world only when it was disfigured by wounds and bruises, only when it was exhausted and almost falling to the ground with weariness.

Again Christ identified Himself with those whom He would indwell through all time.

He stood there naked in front of the world and in front of His Heavenly Father, identified with all those sinners who are found out, whose shame is made public, or, perhaps more terrible for them, shown to those whom they love and from whom, above all others, they would wish to keep it secret...

He stood there identified with everyone who loves, because everyone who loves must be known sooner or later as he is, without pretense, his soul stripped bare.  

Art: Glass, Albert Chavaz (d. 1990), Parish Church, Vercorin, Swiss Alps

THE NUN WITH THE SMILE

 

 

 

 

We continue with young people who died young, uniting their suffering with the suffering of Christ- our theme for this Lent.

SERVANT OF GOD SISTER CECILIA MARIA of the HOLY FACE was born in 1973 in San Martín de los Andes, Argentina as one of ten siblings in a military family. Despite the challenges of frequent relocations, she was deeply inspired by the faith she encountered through her family and education. Her calling to the Carmelite order began to take shape during her university years, when the writings of St. Teresa of Ávila awakened in her a desire for intimacy with Christ.

 A nurse by profession and a violinist, she stood out for her joy and ever-present smile. After a winding journey of discernment, including time in two other Carmelite communities, Cecilia María finally found her home in the Carmelite convent of Santa Fe. There, she embraced the contemplative life with a warmth and humanity that would become her hallmark.

 In her time living at the monastery, she played the violin and was known for her sweetness. In late 2015, during the Advent season and the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Sister Cecilia María received a devastating diagnosis: cancer of the tongue, with metastasis to a lymph node. Despite the pain and grueling treatments, she exuded a sense of peace that astonished those around her. During this difficult time, she continued to pray and offer up her sufferings, convinced that she was close to her encounter with God.

  A poignant image of her, lying in a hospital bed with a serene smile on her face, went viral shortly before her death in June 2016. The photo encapsulated her ability to radiate hope and beauty even in the face of profound suffering. In one of her final letters to her family, she wrote, “I feel the pain growing, but I am not alone. Together, we will follow the Lamb.”

Those who knew Sister Cecilia María describe her as a beacon of joy and empathy. Her smile, often visible even in her final days of suffering, became a symbol of her profound spiritual peace. “She had the gift of connecting with people,” recalls Sister Fabiana Guadalupe Retamal, a fellow Carmelite. “Even in her hardest moments, her smile came from the depths of her heart. It wasn’t forced—it was a reflection of her trust in God.”

In the final weeks of her illness, her condition worsened, and she had to be hospitalized. From her bed, she never stopped praying and offering up her sufferings, with the certainty that her encounter with God was near.

 She wrote her last wish on a piece of paper: “I was thinking about how I would like my funeral to be. First, some intense prayer, and then a great celebration for everyone. Don't forget to pray, but don't forget to celebrate either!”

 She passed to the Lord in Buenos Aires in the early hours of June 23, 2016. Sister Cecilia Maria’s death, her life, and her smile were a testimony to happiness. Our Lord assured us that the world would know we are Christians by our love.

In January 2025, the archbishop of Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz in Argentina, Sergio Fenoy, decreed the beginning of the cause for beatification and canonization.

 In 2024, when signing the edict to begin the process prior to the cause, the prelate highlighted the witness of the nun’s “love and trust in Jesus Christ, even in the midst of the most difficult trials,” assuring that “she has awakened in many hearts the desire for a greater commitment to Christian life.”

 We continue with young people who died young, uniting their suffering with the suffering of Christ- our theme for this Lent.

LAST FALL

"This is the worst fall of all.  It comes at the worst moment of all.  It tears open all the wounds in his body; the shock dispels the last ounce of strength that he had mustered to go on.  It shatters the last hope, the last remnant of faith, in nearly everyone in the crowd.  It is triumph for his enemies, heartbreak for his friends. 

The effect on the crowd is terrible.  From having been an object of compassion, of admiration, he has become an object of contempt.  Hope has given way to despair, struggling faith to bitterness and derision: “He has saved others, himself he cannot save!”

Now Christ gets up, he does not turn his head, he does not heed the disappointment of the crowd.  He gets up, weaker than he has ever been, almost too exhausted to go on, all the old wounds open and bleeding; more abject than he has ever been, a greater disappointment to his followers than he has ever been, in their eyes a complete failure.  He gets up and goes on; lays his beautiful hands, those hands of a carpenter, on the wood of the cross for the last time, and without looking round begins the ascent to the summit of Calvary.

The last fall is the worst fall.  In it Christ identified himself with those who fall again and again, and who get up again and again and go on – those who even after the struggle of a lifetime fall when the end is in sight; those who in this last fall lose the respect of many of their fellow men, but who overcome their humiliation and shame; who, ridiculous in the eyes of men, are beautiful in the eyes of God, because in Christ, with Christ’s courage, in his heroism, they get up and go on, climbing the hill of Calvary.

In the third fall, the showing of Christ’s love is this: He does not indwell only the virtuous, only those who are successful in overcoming temptation, only those who are strong and in whom his power is made manifest to the world; he chooses to indwell those who seem to fail, those who fall again and again, those who seem to be overcome even when the end is in sight.  In them, if they will it, he abides; in them he overcomes weakness and failure, in them he triumphs; and in his power they can persevere to the end, abject before men but glorious with Christ’s glory before God." (Caryll Houselander) 

Art: Jan Toroop (d. 1928)  Dutch

THE WEEPING WOMEN

 

"Now Christ is followed by a great multitude of people, among them women who mourn over him, who weep loud for him.  A strange thing happens.  He turns to them and says, “It is not for me that you should weep, daughters of Jerusalem; you should weep for yourselves and for your children”: strange because at first sight it seems that he, who accepts every straw of compassion with pathetic gratitude, refuses the brave, open compassion of these women!  It is, or seems to be, a contradiction; it is not like him to refuse anything from anyone.   

 We have seen how until now, and indeed all through his passion, he has accepted the compassion of anyone at all who would give it to him, accepting even the forced helped of Simon.  But this accepting on Christ’s part began long before the hour of his passion struck; it was part of his plan of love from all eternity, his plan to depend on his creatures, to need them, to need all that they could and would give to him to fulfill that unimaginable plan of his love!

What, then, is the meaning of this curious refusal of the compassion, of the tears, of the women of Jerusalem?  “It is not for me that you should weep, daughters of Jerusalem; you should weep for yourselves and for your children.”  Is this a refusal, a rebuke, or a warning?

In a sense it is none of these, but a showing, a pointing to something which, if these women miss, and if we miss today, they and we will have missed the meaning of Christ’s passion.   Which if we miss, all our devotion to the person of Jesus Christ in His historical Passion, all our meditations and prayers, will be sterile and will fall short of their object to reach and comfort the heart of Christ.  He is pointing to His passion in the souls of each of those women, in the souls of each of their children and their children’s children all through time.  He is pointing to all those lives to come through all the ages in which His suffering will go on.

For Himself the consummation of His love for the world is close: He is very near to Calvary now, in a few hours it will be over; He will be at peace and He will have entered into his glory.  But in the souls of men His suffering will begin again, and it will go on all through the years to come.  Evil will go on gathering strength all through the centuries to come; the Christ in man will be assaulted and threatened by it.

There will be many who will follow literally in Christ’s footsteps, who will enter into His glory with Him through His sacrifice – martyrs who give their lives for their faith, young men who willingly give their lives for their country, children who die Christ’s own redeeming death because they die in the full power and splendor of innocence.  It is not for these that we must weep, though we may weep for ourselves in our seeming loss of them.  They are the privileged ones whose love is immediately consummated in Christ’s love.  We must weep for ourselves, and for our fellows in whom Christ suffers on, still laboring, stumbling, falling on the Via Crucis, still mocked and goaded and assaulted on the way, still in the midst of the struggle.

There are those in every age in whom the suffering of Christ is manifest, almost visible, the beauty of His love shining through the ugliness of their circumstances.  It is not for Christ in them that we must weep.  It is for Christ whose beauty is hidden, Christ in the outcast, in the man who is wrestling with temptation, who is unrecognized, uncomforted; Christ in those whom we pass by without seeing, without knowing, whom we allow to stagger on, on His way, loaded with His too heavy cross, unhelped, unwept, uncomforted.

It is in order that we should seek Him and give our compassion to Him, weep for Him in these, that Christ showed His need for sympathy in His Earthly life and on the way of the cross.  We must weep for Him in these and in our own souls, in these days, the days of the dry wood: “It is not for me that you should weep; you should weep for yourselves and your children.  Behold, a time is coming when men will say, It is well for the barren, for the wombs that never bore children, and the breasts that never suckled them.  It is then that they will begin to say to the mountains, “Fall on us,” and to the hills, “Cover us.”  If it goes so hard with the tree that is still green, what will become of the tree that is already dried up?”  (Caryll Houselander) 

Art: Virgil Cantini- Pope Paul  Cultural Center, Washington, D.C.

 

ANOTHER FALL

 

"Christ is down in the dust.  This second fall is harder than the first; He is nearer the end of His tether now, more dependent than before on others to help Him to get up and go on.  It may have been something trifling, almost absurd, that threw Him down.  Perhaps something as small as a pebble on the road; yes, that would have been enough to send Him hurtling down, with that terrible burden on His back, and His own exhaustion as He nears the end of His bitter journey.

It is the same today, the same for those “other Christs” who have gone a long way on the road and who fall, not for the first time now, under the heavy cross of circumstance – those who have carried this cross for a long time, who have become exhausted by the unequal struggle and fall, who with him are down in the dust.  It is for them that Christ falls for the second time and lies under the crushing weight of his cross, waiting for those who will come forward to lend their hands to lift it from his back and enable him to go on to the end of his way of suffering and love.

The crushing weight of circumstances today makes the Christian life a cross which, even though it is a redeeming cross, is hard to carry: the economic conditions; the weight of public opinion – the contempt for those who choose the hard way because it is Christ’s way; the weight of material hardship – the weight that grows heavier and heavier as those who must carry it come nearer and nearer to the end of the journey: the weight of the cross – the sheer material weight that was heavy enough to throw Christ down, to throw God face down in the dust.  If something as trifling as a pebble in the road or a false step could throw Christ down on the road, so may a tiny provocation, a sudden temptation, a mocking word – a fragment that adds to the struggle – bring the man staggering under the cross down: the servant is not greater than his master.

It is not only soldiers and warders under orders who can lift the cross from Christ’s back today, not only they who can help Christ to his feet again.  Everyone who labors to lift the burden of material misery from the backs of the poor gives his hands to free Christ from the crushing burden.  Everyone who concerns himself to change public opinion and to make the Christ-life honored in the world helps Christ to his feet again.  Everyone who forces his way against the indifferent mob, against the unthinking multitude who see nothing but folly in Christ and his cross, helps to drag back the great burden from his exhausted body.  Everyone who approaches Christ fallen under the cross, coming to him in friendship and love, to relieve him of the burden of the Christian life lived in isolation and loneliness in opposition to the whole modern environment, helps Christ to his feet in the world again and sets him on his way.

Everyone who recognizes who it is that has fallen there, who it is for whom the burden of circumstances, of materialism, of temptation has proved too persistent and too heavy, lends his hands to lift the cross from the prostrate Christ and to set Christ on His way to the consummation of His love once more." (Caryll Houselander)

Art: Tea Sciano- New Mexico

ANOTHER CARLOS?

 

 

 

So many young people are popping up who are an example to the youth of our day, especially those with grave illnesses.

Church authorities are in the process of reviewing the life of PEDRO BALLESTER, a British university student who died of cancer in 2018, to gauge whether his canonization cause should be opened. Pedro, who died in 2018 at age 21, was remembered by those who knew him as an ordinary young man whose response to suffering revealed a profound faith.

Born in Manchester, England in 1996 to Spanish parents, Pedro was described by his father, as "a very normal guy" whose holiness came not from extraordinary talents, but from allowing God to guide his life. And he did that through prayer."

 Both parents are members of Opus Dei and greatly influenced the boy’s spiritual formation.

"Pedrito," as his father affectionately called him, grew in prayer and discernment as a teenager. At age 16, he surprised his family by announcing he felt called to become a numerary in Opus Dei, committing himself to celibacy and a life dedicated to God.

 Although he would have to wait until he was 18 to formally join, his father said Pedro's joy only deepened. "He became happier, more joyful. He had that joy, the kind that you think your son is in love."

 Pedro was also an academically gifted student. In September 2014, he began studying chemical engineering at Imperial College London. But just months later, he developed severe back pain and was diagnosed with advanced pelvic cancer.

He returned to Manchester for treatment, hoping eventually to resume his studies. He endured continuous medical care over the next three years, alternating between the hospital and Greygarth Hall, an Opus Dei center in Manchester, where he lived with other numeraries.

Despite intense pain and fatigue, he remained focused on others, never showing his own suffering.  His joy and faith had a transformative effect on others, including fellow patients. Before he died he asked to see Pope Francis.When the Holy Father heard of this young man,  he agreed to meet him. Pedro gave him a card signed by the patients, doctors and nurses of Christie Hospital’s adolescent cancer ward where he was being treated.

After three years of treatment and suffering, Pedro died on Jan. 13, 2018. His funeral Mass was packed. A diocesan inquiry into Pedro's life is underway and is currently interviewing witnesses.

Pedro’s father (also called Pedro) stated the one thing he wants people, especially young people, to understand about his son's life and spiritual journey "is that the secret of life is to trust in God."

 "When Pedrito was diagnosed  he had it so clear. He said, 'Mom, Dad, I gave my life to God, and God gives the cross to his friends.' So, if you have a much bigger cross, that means that you have much more glory (awaiting). Not the glory of pride, but the glory of God. You're going to help so many more people because of that suffering that God has allowed you to carry.,"

THE WOMAN WITH THE VEIL

We have seen Jesus’ Mother, a stranger (Simeon) made to help His load lighter and now a woman struck with compassion breaks through the crowd and past soldiers to offer her veil to wipe His face, perhaps even risking her own life, as one never knew what the soldiers would do. Each of these people and the weeping women of Jerusalem soon to come into play, make up the “Way of the Cross”  Each gives us an insight into the suffering of Jesus as He makes His way to His death.  

"Now that face of infinite majesty and compelling beauty is unrecognizable.  The eyes which could see into the secret places of men’s souls are blinded, swollen from the long sleepless night of trials and judgment and filled with sweat and blood.  The cheeks are bruised and dirty, the mouth swollen, the hair “like ripe corn” is tangled by the crown of thorns and matted with blood.  Certainly there is no sign now of the beauty that could win a man’s heart by a single glance, or of the power that can rule the tempests and give life to the dead.  On the contrary, here is a man who is the very personification of humiliation, who is ugly with wounds and suffering, who is in the hands of other men who have bound Him and are leading Him out to die, and who is not even able to carry His own Cross alone.

It is all this, from which His close friends have fled, which drives this woman to Him.  It is the ugliness and the helplessness, which frightened those whom He called His “own” away, that draws her to Him; it is her compassion that gives her the courage to come close to Him. 

She comes with a veil in her hands, a cloth on which to wipe the poor disfigured face.  She kneels as we kneel to wipe the tears from the faces of little children.  Gratefully the head bowing over her sinks into the clean linen cloth and for a brief moment is covered by it.  Then He raises His head, and she kneeling there, her own face lifted, sees the face of Christ looking down at her, and behind it the great beam of the cross.  The two are together within the shadow of the cross on the street, Veronica and Christ. 

She sees the majesty that was hidden, for now she has wiped away what she can of the blood and sweat and tears, she sees that they hid a face that is serene in its suffering, calm, majestic, infinitely tender.  The swollen mouth smiles; the exhausted eyes are full of gentleness; the expression, after all, is not one of defeat and despair but of triumph and joy....

 Until someone comes to reveal the secret of Christ indwelling the sufferer’s soul to Him, He cannot see any purpose in  His pain.  There is only one way to reveal Christ living on in the human heart to those who are ignorant concerning it.  That is Veronica’s way, through showing Christ’s love.  When someone comes – maybe a stranger, maybe someone close at home but whose compassion was not guessed before – and reveals Christ’s own pity in herself, the hard crust that has contracted the sufferer’s heart melts away, and looking into the gentle face of this Veronica of today, the sufferer looks, as it were, into a mirror in which he sees the beauty of Christ reflected at last from his own soul.

 Until Veronica came to him on his way to Calvary, Christ was blinded by blood and sweat and tears.  The merciful hands of Veronica wiped the blindness from His eyes; looking into her face, He saw his own beauty reflected in it.  He saw His own eyes looking back at Him from hers.  She had done this thing in the power in which alone she could do it, the power of Christ’s own love.

 In the compassion on her lifted face, Christ saw, in the hour of His extreme dereliction, the triumph of His own love for men.  He saw His love, radiant, triumphant in her, and in all the Veronicas to come through all time, in them and in those sufferers in whom His own divine beauty would be restored by their compassion." (Caryll Houselander) 

Art: Church of the Holy Cross, Sisak, Croatia