Because of the coronavirus pandemic, public Church services have been prohibited around the country. But that doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the richness of the Easter Triduum this week. Here are some free liturgical guides to celebrating Holy Thursday, Good Friday, the Easter Vigil, and Easter Sunday exactly where you are: at home. These liturgical guides are based on the Roman Missal and include prayers, readings, and rituals with easy to follow directions. Download the guides today!
Join us for our online preached retreat, based on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. Brian Strassburger, SJ, will guide us through themes of the exercises and offer resources for prayer and reflection. This is the first of six talks that will be...
I know that from struggle will come new life, because I believe the resurrection is always the new beginning after any heavy cross. And it is with this cross that I come to the altar where Your arms are open wide.
Both the season of Lent and the current coronavirus crisis are desert experiences. Just as we adapt new practices during Lent, we are experiencing radical changes in our lives with the spread of COVID-19. Last month, we reached out to TJP readers about how they are praying, fasting, and giving alms this year. Many of you responded. Read the responses, along with the graces that readers are receiving. You’ll find that these words echo even stronger amid the uncertainty and anxiety of the current crisis.
One of the great images of Lent is Jesus being driven into the desert where he goes toe-to-toe with Satan. As real as Jesus’ temptations are to pleasure, fame, and power, they are but expressions of a more fundamental and deceptively obvious one: the temptation to forget who and whose you are.
There is something I find at Mass on Ash Wednesday that I don’t find elsewhere. Nowhere besides here do I step in line with old ladies in purple sweaters, fellow students, elderly widows, the nuns, the homeless, the workers on lunch hour, the priests, and the University president to face our shame, imperfections, and our transgressions, together.
Ash Wednesday is just one week away. Before you decide to give up candy or french fries or even Facebook, I encourage you to take some advice: do nothing.
It’s been a heavy Holy Week. What does that mean for Easter?
Let’s not confuse Tiger Woods’ win at the Masters for a redemption story. Let’s call it what it is: a comeback. As Holy Week teaches us, redemption is about healing and right relationships. This is a sports story. It’s a comeback.
Just as a poem transmits greater meaning in an audible reading than a theoretical analysis, Holy Week offers us a powerful and carnal memoir.