Month: May 2024

I was sitting in the medical center waiting room with my father. We had arrived early for his treatment, so I was checking emails and trying to edit a document, using my phone. This was not going smoothly!

My patience was wearing thin as I listened to a news story blaring through someone’s phone. “How rude,” I thought, as I looked up and scanned the waiting room to see where the sound was coming from. The area was filling up. Everyone seemed to be arriving in pairs. It was a cancer treatment day at the medical center, and I could see the strain on people’s faces.

Suddenly, I spotted the person with the loud phone. He was an old man, and when our eyes met, we held each other’s gazes for a long moment. Before I turned away, I gave him a look intended to express my disdain over the news story he was blasting across the waiting room.

I went back to editing my document. No one else really even seemed aware of the old man. Why was I feeling so annoyed?

As I fired off my last email, I realized the sound from the old man’s phone was getting louder. I looked again in his direction and our eyes locked. He clearly had been watching me and seemed to have turned up the volume on his phone. What was his problem? Why was he trying to get my attention? What did he want?

My father and I looked at each other and shrugged.

“Let’s move, Dad. Let’s get away from this ridiculous noise.”

I shot one last annoyed glance at the old man, as my father and I walked to a far corner of the waiting room, away from the noise.

About a week later I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking about that old man. I could see the waiting room clearly in my mind and I realized that the old man was alone. Everyone was in pairs, but not this old man. Was he frightened, being there alone? Were his treatments working? How was he feeling that day?

Why hadn’t I noticed that the old man was alone? Would it have changed how I engaged with him? Why was I so perturbed by the sounds of his phone?

As I thought about the old man in the early morning light, I thought about St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

St. Mother Teresa showed us that we are not here on earth to rush through our days, and to leave others behind.

We are here to love and to be kind to one another, because in doing so, we enable God to enter into that moment.

As she observed, the world’s people need more love. We are all hungry for God:

“Are we willing to share people’s sufferings, not only in poor countries but all over the world? It seems to me that this great poverty of suffering in the West is much harder to solve. When I pick up a starving person off the street and offer him a bowl of rice or a piece of bread, I can satisfy his hunger. But a person that has been beaten or feels unwanted or unloved or fearful or rejected by society experiences a kind of poverty that is much more painful and deep. The cure is much more difficult to find. People are hungry for God. People are hungry for love. Are we aware of that? Do we know that? Do we see that? Do we have eyes to see? Quite often we look but we don’t see. We are all just passing through this world. We need to open our eyes and see.”¹

Early today, I prayed for that old man, and asked Jesus that this man experience love deeply in his life.  

I also asked Jesus to help me to slow down – way down – so that I may see the people in my path that He is asking me to care for and love.

The people that God places in our paths are there for a reason. St. Francis of Assisi aptly observed that when we give of our ourselves to others, we receive so much more than we give. In giving, we receive the lasting gifts of more faith and hope and love, and a deeper awareness of why we are all here, together.

Jesus loves us so much. His kind of love can change us, if we allow His love to flow through us and on to others.

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us.” Ephesians 4: 32, 5: 1-2

¹Mother Teresa, No Greater Love (California: New World Library, 2001), pages 55-56.

When someone asks you to describe who Jesus is, what do you say?

Words that come quickly include brave and holy and pure and immortal. We also describe Jesus as a prophet, a teacher, the Messiah and Son of God – and Savior. Perhaps, on some level, it is easier to describe Jesus in ways that reinforce His Divinity.

But Jesus also desires that we know and recognize Him as a friend. Why? Because it is our awareness of Jesus’ friendship and humanity that changes everything.

I love this image of Jesus from The Shack, a fictional story about a grieving father, Mack, who finds God in the midst of a devastating tragedy. In Chapter 7, Mack and Jesus go out to the dock to look at the stars. Here is an excerpt from the chapter:

“They made their way three-quarters up the dock and lay down on their backs, looking up. The elevation of this place seemed to magnify the heavens, and Mack reveled in seeing stars in such numbers and clarity. Jesus suggested that they close their eyes for a few minutes, allowing the lasting effects of dusk to disappear for the night. Mack complied, and when he finally opened his eyes, the sight was so powerful that he experienced vertigo for a few seconds. It almost felt like he was falling up into space, the stars racing toward him as if to embrace him. He lifted his hands, imagining that he could reach out and pluck the diamonds, one by one, off a velvet-black sky.

“’Wow!’ he whispered.

“’Incredible!’ whispered Jesus. ‘I never get tired of this.’” – Excerpt from The Shack¹

Through this scene, Young paints an amazing picture of Jesus as our friend.

It is exactly how I imagine Him.

Coming to know Jesus as a friend changes things for us. In Young’s book, Mack’s encounter with Jesus compels him to ultimately make peace with the tragedy that has occurred in his family. Forgiveness is an unthinkable act for Mack, and yet with Jesus’ friendship and love, the unthinkable happens.

Life with Jesus is about learning to trust in Him as our Savior – and it is about deepening our friendship with Him. Jesus desires our trust and friendship so that, ultimately, we might love as He loves.

Remember that Jesus is Love:

“Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is Love. This is how God shows His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him. This is Love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us [first] and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” 1 John 4: 7-10

Jesus knows that by loving those who are His own in the world, He is sharing with them the love and mercy of God the Father. So too, when we love, are we sharing the love and mercy of God with the people He has blessed us to know.

Jesus makes the same promise to us today that He made to his disciples and friends centuries ago:

“I am with you always, even until the end of time.” Matthew 28: 20

Jesus will never leave us. Cultivating our friendship with Him expands our lives in ways we cannot even imagine.

The longing that exists deep within your heart, to love and to be loved, is an invitation to know the friendship of Jesus.

“From the very first time I came to know the Lord, the gaze of my soul became drowned in Him for all eternity. Each time the Lord draws close to me and my knowledge of Him grows deeper, a more perfect love grows within my heart.” – Excerpt from the Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul²

The love and friendship of Jesus will change your life.

¹ Wm. Paul Young, The Shack (CA: Windblown Media, 2007), 109.

²Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul (Massachusetts: Marian Press, 2020), Verses 231, page 116.

“Remember that you are never alone, Christ is with you on your journey every day of your lives! He has called you and chosen you to live in the freedom of the children of God. Turn to Him in prayer and in love. Ask Him to grant you the courage and strength to live in this freedom always. Walk with Him who is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’!”

Saint John Paul II, from the 12^th World Youth Day Address, August 23, 1997.

Do you ever wonder about what Jesus looked like? In particular, what was the shape of His face? What color were His eyes? Was his hair straight or wavy, dark or lighter in color? What was His smile like?

There is no physical description of Jesus in the Gospels or in any of the New Testament letters. After recording His arrival on earth, New Testament writers jump forward to record His ministry, teachings, death and resurrection. But none of the writers record anything about His physical appearance. Why?

In the Old Testament, there are two references to the appearance of Christ.

In Isaiah’s prophesy about the anointed Servant of the Lord, he describes Christ in this way:

“For He grew up before them like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; He had no form or comeliness that we should look at Him, and no beauty that we should despise Him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.” Isaiah 53: 2-3

Psalm 45 offers perhaps a gentler description of Christ:

“You are the fairest of the sons of men; grace is poured from Your lips; therefore God has blessed You for ever.” Psalm 45: 2

But it is impossible to draw any definitive conclusions about the appearance of Christ from these Old Testament descriptions.

Scholars of the mysterious Shroud of Turin, a length of linen believed to have wrapped the body of Jesus for burial, have tried to draw conclusions about the physical appearance of Christ. But descriptions vary, and arguments arise from time to time about the authenticity of the linen.

Why are there no precise physical descriptions of Jesus?

St. Augustine, in his moving and profound writings about the Trinity, confirms that, in fact, everyone seems to have a different mental — and physical — image of Jesus:

“The physical face of the Lord is pictured with infinite variety by countless imaginations, though whatever it was like He certainly had only one. Nor as regards the faith we have in the Lord Jesus Christ it is in the least relevant to salvation what our imaginations picture Him like … What does matter is that we think of Him as a man¹.”

I treasure these words from St. Augustine. His fifteen books De Trinitate, on which he worked for 15 years, from 400 to 416 AD, reveal a soul intent upon leading others to an encounter with the Trinity – with God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

Yes, the images of the embodied Christ that we carry in our hearts do vary widely – as do the intensely personal faiths that we place in Jesus and carry in our hearts. No doubt this has been God’s plan all along.

As St. Augustine wisely observes, what matters is that we recognize Jesus as a man who walked the very earth that we walk now. What matters is that we take time to form an understanding about the Humanity and the Divinity of Christ.

What matters is that we take time to explore the mystery of our faith.

Jesus asks each one of us to decide who He is as the Divine Son of God, who He was as the very Word made Flesh on earth, and who He is as the Beloved and Risen Son of the Father.

We find our answers in the silence, with Jesus.

“Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, ‘Who do men say that the Son of Man is?’ And they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jermiah or one of the prophets.’ He [Jesus] said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’” Matthew 16: 13-15

¹St. Augustine of Hippo, On the Trinity 8.7; E. Hill trans., The Works of St. Augustine, The Trinity, Part 1, Volume 5 (Brooklyn, N.Y., City Press, 1991), pgs. 246-247.

In the early morning light, distracted by emails that have arrived overnight, I look out my window and into the city.

As traffic grows in the street surrounding the park and fountain, a priest appears on the sidewalk below, his long cassock blowing in the early breeze. He has been out walking, welcoming the day, and speaking with the Savior. I observe this in the way he moves — still in the world, but lifted above the world’s cares.

As the priest disappears down the walk, I am reminded that you, Jesus, are among us, every moment of every day.

My eyes open wide, as I take in the beauty and mystery of the morning light.

Help us to walk with You, Jesus.

Holy Spirit, remind us to pause throughout the day, to listen for Jesus’ gentle words on our hearts.

More than anything, help us to become channels of Your Love today, Jesus.

“Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise.” James 5: 13