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

A STRANGER HELPS

 

"He is laboring under His cross.  It is too much for Him to carry alone.  Everyone can see that, but no one offers to help Him.  Someone, then, must be forced.  The soldiers seize upon Simon of Cyrene.  It has, or he thinks it has, nothing to do with him.  He was simply about his own business in Jerusalem.  It seems to him mere chance that he met this tragic procession – an unlucky chance for him, but there it is!  He is made to take up the load and help this man, a stranger to him, and whom he supposes to be a criminal on the way to his execution.

Really there is no chance in the incident.  It is something planned by God from eternity to show men the way of Christ’s love: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  It means that no one is meant to suffer alone.  No one is meant to carry his own cross without some other human being to help him.

Again Christ is proving to the world that He has come to live the life of all ordinary men on the simplest human terms.  Now as He accepts the reluctant help of Simon – accept it because He perforce must, and yet in His humility gratefully – He is showing each one of us whom He will indwell, what He asks of us and what He wants us to give to one another. 

Simon of Cyrene saw only three criminals (of whom Christ was one) on the way to die.  He could not know, until he had taken up that stranger’s cross, that in it was the secret of his own salvation.  Simon thought at first that Christ was no business of his.  He did not even know him; he did not seem to be worth helping; his own interrupted business in Jerusalem that day seemed much more important to him.  Why should he put his own business aside, why give his strength, his time, and even his suffering for this man?  (He must have suffered.  The hard, heavy wood would have torn and blistered his hands.  Or if one end of the cross was laid on his shoulder, it would have bruised it as it bruised Christ’s.  The way to Calvary must have been exhausting, and have sapped the energy he wanted for his own affairs.  Again, he must have suffered mentally: the frustration of his own plans, perhaps those on which very much depended; and the humiliation of being ordered to do this thing by the hated Roman soldiers – bits of boys anyway, who found it amusing to inconvenience and make mock of a Jew!)

We must be ready to carry the burden of anyone whom we meet on our way and who clearly needs help, not only those who “deserve,” or seem to “deserve,” help.  Everyone is our “business,” and Christ in everyone, potentially or actually, has a first claim on us, a claim that comes before all else.

We are here on Earth to help to carry the cross of Christ, the Christ hidden in other men, and to help in whatever way we can.  We may, like Simon, have literally a strong arm to give, we may help to do hard work; we may have material goods to give; we may have time, which we desperately want for ourselves but which we must sacrifice for Christ in man.  We may have only suffering.  Suffering is the most precious coin of all.  Suffering of body, suffering of mind, paid down willingly for Christ in man, enables Him to carry His redeeming cross through the world to the end of time. 

Suffering contains in itself that Simon gave: our mind and body, frustration, and identification with someone else.  That last is the germ of our own salvation, that way to transform the self-pity that is the danger in all suffering into the love of other people which reaches out a hand to Christ, and saves us.

We do not look for Christ only in saints; we look for Him, perceive Him by faith, and try to help Him, most of all in sinners.  It is in sinners that Christ suffers most today, in them that His need is most urgent.” (Caryll Houselander) 

                Art: Ang Kiukok- Philippines

PATRONESS OF DIABETICS

 

 

Our next saint, who suffered greatly in her lifetime was ST. PAULINE of the AGONIZING HEART of JESUS, C.I.I.C. She was born Amabile Lucia Visintainer on December 16, 1865, the second daughter of Antonio Napoleone Visintainer and Anna Pianezzer in the town of Vigolo Vattaro, then in the County of Tyrol, part of Austro-Hungary, now in Italy. Her ancestors were Germanic, who had settled in the region of Vigolo Vattaro as early as 1491, their surname being originally spelled Wiesenteiner.

Like many others in the area, the Visintainers  were very poor  practicing Catholics. In September 1875, the family, along with a hundred other people of the town, about a fifth of its population, emigrated to the State of Santa Catarina in Brazil, where they founded the village of Vigolo, now part of Nova Trento.

Amabile was known even at a youthful age for her piety and charity. From an early age she spoke of giving her life to God. While she had very little education, she had a great love for the Catholic faith and for the suffering and poor. After receiving her First Communion at about age 12, she began to participate in the life of the local parish, teaching catechism to children, visiting the sick and cleaning the local chapel.

On 12 July 1890, Amabile  and her friend, Virginia Rosa Nicolodi, under the spiritual direction of a Jesuit priest, Luigi Rossi, committed their lives to religious service, under Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. They began by caring for a woman suffering from terminal cancer, in a small house which was donated to the small community and the young girls began a schedule of religious living. After the woman's death the following year, they were joined by a third friend, Teresa Anna Maule.

In 1895, seeing the need for a more formal and secure organization of the young women coming to them, it was decided they should  establish a religious congregation called the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, which was approved by José de Camargo Barros, Bishop of Curitiba.

 In December of that same year, the founding trio took religious vows. Amabile took the religious name by which she is now known. The congregation, Brazil's first locally founded, grew quickly throughout the state, and in 1903  Sister Pauline was elected their Superior General for life. She moved from Nova Trento to Ipiranga, São Paulo, where she opened a convent of the congregation in order to take care of orphans, the children of former slaves.  Slavery having been ended by the Empire of Brazil only in 1888, the aged slaves were left to die because they could no longer work.

In 1909 Sistere Pauline was removed from her position as Superior General by Duarte Leopoldo e Silva, Archbishop of São Paulo, following a series of disputes within the congregation. She was sent to work with the sick at the Santa Casa and the elderly of the Hospice of St. Vincent de Paul at Bragança Paulista, without being able to assume an active role in her own congregation. She spent her spare time praying in support of the congregation. 

In 1918, with the permission of Archbishop Duarte, she was brought back by the Superior General, Vicência Teodora, to live at the General Motherhouse of the congregation at Ipiranga, where she would remain until her death. 

Sister Pauline's health began a long, slow decline in 1938, as she fought a losing battle with diabetes. In two operations, first her middle finger and then her right arm were amputated. She spent the last months of her life totally blind. On 9 July 1942 she died with the last words, "God's will be done".

Sister Pauline was acknowledged as the "Venerable Mother Foundress", when the Decree of Praise was granted by Pope Pius XI on 19 May 1933 to the Congregation of the Little Sisters, establishing it as one of pontifical right.

 She was the first Brazilian to be proclaimed a saint by the Catholic Church when she was canonized on May 19, 2002, by Pope St. John Paul II. She is the  patroness of diabetics.  Her feast day is July 9. 

Shrine of St. Paulina, Nova Trento, Brazil

HIS MOTHER

 

“Jesus is on His feet again, once more he starts on His way.  As He lifts his bowed head and looks at the road He is to tread, He comes face to face with His mother.

It is not by chance that she meets Him at this  moment, just as He falls and struggles to His feet again.  She sees that which no one else in that crowd sees, the tiny child taking His first unsteady steps and falling on the garden path in Nazareth.  She is there beside Him, holding her breath, longing to put out her hands to hold Him, to prevent the fall, but she lets Him go alone, the little child whose independence she must respect, her Son who must learn to walk on His own feet, and to walk away from her.

For His mother, those first steps of the baby learning to walk were the first steps on the road to Calvary.  The “Word was made flesh,” her flesh.  God had taken

human nature, her human nature.  The way of the Cross had begun.  Already His face was set steadfastly toward Jerusalem.  It was for this journey that she had fashioned those blameless feet from her own flesh and blood.  

Seeing the first fall on the Via Crucis, His mother sees the first fall on the path in Nazareth.  Now as then she is silent; she holds back her hands as she did then.  His will is her will.  It was for this hour that she gave Him to the world, for this that He grew from the infant to the child, from the child to the man.

He goes on His way.  He passes her by.  This is something at the very heart of His suffering: that it must afflict her whom He loves; that because they both love, neither can spare the other.  He goes on His way to do His Father’s will."

Mary has given Him the precious blood that is to be shed.  It is to be shed in order that it may become the blood stream that is the life of every man who lives in Christ, the blood stream of the mystical body of Christ on Earth through all time, the lifeblood of the world flowing through the heart of humanity.  When Mary uttered her Fiat – “Be it done to me according to thy word” – when she conceived Christ and gave Him her own humanity, she made every mother to become a potential mother of Christ; every child who would come into this world, one who was to come to be a Christ to it.  “If anyone does the will of my Father who is in Heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother.”

 Every woman who sees her child suffer, every woman who is separated from her child, every woman who must stand by helpless and see her child die, every woman who echoes the old cry, “Why, why, why my child?” has the answer from the mother of Christ.  She can look at the child through Mary’s eyes, she can know the answer with Mary’s mind, she can accept the suffering with Mary’s will, she can love Christ in her child with Mary’s heart – because Mary had made her a mother of Christ.  It is Christ who suffers in her child; it is His innocence redeeming the world, His love saving the world.  He too is about His Father’s business, the business of love."  (Caryll Houselander)

Art: Ang Kiukok- Philippines

A STAMP FOR UKRAINE

 

On February 27, 2026, the Vatican unveiled a new postage stamp honoring Ukraine's Catholics, with the design showing their cathedral in Kyiv during a blackout in an unusually pointed reference to the daily struggles of Ukrainians in wartime. The war is now in its fourth year.

 While the Vatican Postal Service frequently issues stamps to mark Catholic holidays or honor national Churches, it usually avoids any political references in its designs, preferring depictions of religious figures such as local saints.

The new stamp, issued in the week that marks the fourth anniversary of Russia's invasion, depicts Kyiv's Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ darkened by a lack of electricity but illuminated from behind with the orange glow of an evening sky.

 Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, leader of Ukraine's four million Eastern-rite Catholics, said at a Vatican event for the unveiling that the release of the stamp represented "a great moment of consolation".

 "We really feel embraced by the Holy See for this particular attention to our history, to our life in this tragic moment of war," Shevchuk said, speaking Italian.

 The Vatican stamp was released to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the restoration of Kyiv's Catholic diocese after the fall of the Soviet Union and the 12th anniversary of the cathedral's construction.

 Pope Leo made an impassioned appeal on Sunday for peace in Ukraine, saying an end to the war with Russia "cannot be postponed".  “In my heart there remains the dramatic situation that is before everyone’s eyes. How many victims, how many lives and families shattered, how much destruction, how many indescribable sufferings!”