From the Friars: A New Saint

We find in today’s Gospel, Judas filled with the very darkness into which he fled and Jesus preparing His apostles for His ultimate sacrifice. He affectionately addresses these grown men as ‘children’ and commands them to “love one another; even as I have loved you.” John 13:34, the new commandment of universal love. Jesus, knowing that His hour had come, is about to show them the depth of His love and what that love truly means.

One of my favorite scenes from the film “The Passion of the Christ” depicts a memory/flashback of Mary anxiously running to the child Jesus as he takes a severe fall onto the unforgiving gravel road beneath Him and this juxtaposed with her presently running to her Son as He falls beneath the heavy weight of the cross. Gibson takes some poetic license here as director and places the last verse of today’s second reading upon the bloody and swollen lips of Jesus: “Behold, I make all things new.” Rev. 21:5. The above scene poignantly displays Our Lord’s complete command over the situation, as He both comforts and encourages His most sorrowful mother, all the while, inviting her to enter more deeply into this ultimate display of Agape/ God’s self-emptying and sacrificial love for His children.

On this very day, the Church will raise up yet another witness to the power of God’s transforming love through the canonization of Bl. Charles de Foucauld. From a book by Little Sister Annie of Jesus, Br. Charles speaks to us from his heart:

“God, the Infinite, the Almighty, becomes human, the least of all human beings. For myself, let me always seek the last place of all, so that I can be as lowly as my Master.”

As he sought Christ among the nomads of the Sahara Desert as a Catholic priest he writes: “I want all the people here, be they Christians, Muslims, Jews or whatever, to see me as their brother, a universal brother.”

A few hours before being assassinated by thieves he wrote:

“When we are reduced to nothing, it is the most powerful means we can have to be united with Jesus and to do good to others…When we can suffer and love, we can do much. We can do the most that can be done in this world.”

St. Charles de Foucauld, pray for us!

–Br. Pio