When rejected this truth,
then we take love,
use others,
make them objects
and then when they disappoint us
which they will,
discard.

True love leads to wholeness,

Self seeking love as an end in itself,
the worse drug possible
leading to ever deeper desperation
and in the end loneliness and despair.

Only in the death to the old way of life,
can this love be experienced,
though there are no shortcuts,
yet Love is with us always,
walking with us,
lifting us up
and offering always,
a new beginning and mercy.

For our longing for love
is a response to the invitation
given to all,
for we are all pursued by Love.

Br. Mark Dohle, OSCO

Because of Christ’s merits, because of his intercession with the Father, we are able to attain justice and holiness of life, in him. The Church may indeed experience difficulties, the Gospel may suffer setbacks, but because Jesus is at the right-hand of the Father the Church will never know defeat. Christ’s victory is ours. The power of the glorified Christ, the beloved Son of the eternal Father, is superabundant, to sustain each of us and all of us in the fidelity of our dedication to God’s Kingdom and in the generosity of our celibacy. The efficacy of Christ’s Ascension touches all us in the concrete reality of our daily lives. Because of this mystery it is the vocation of the whole Church to wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Blessed Pope John Paul II
Solemnity of the Ascension of Our Lord
May 24, 1979

This got me thinking: what was really going on during those 40 days? We have done a good job documenting the events of the 40 days of Lent, especially Holy Week, but what about the first 40 days of Easter? What was Jesus doing? Among other things …

He appeared to Mary Magdalen. Note that she was not chosen as the Apostle of the Resurrection because she was a woman, as certain feminists like to claim, or because she was Jesus’ lover, as says a currently popular lie. She was chosen to be the first bearer of the Good News because she was the first one to show up at the tomb, intent on doing her duty even when it seemed futile. And great indeed was her reward. May we, like Mary, continue to do our duty, even when we are tired, discouraged, unappreciated, unrecognized, and just don’t feel like being bothered any more. Our reward, like hers, will be an encounter with the Risen Christ.

He presented the needed evidence of His Resurrection to Peter and John, two members on His inner circle, who came to check up on the incredible tale of Mary M. May we, like Peter and John, not dismiss without checking, even when we find the claims incredible. Remember, we serve an incredible Lord.

He dealt gently with Thomas’ doubts, showing him by the evidence of the wounds in His hands and side that both Crucifixion and Resurrection were real. To this day there are those who “can’t believe in a God who …” But this is the God we have, and still He deals gently with our doubts and fears, showing us the wounds in His Body. Let us “touch and see” that it is He.

He explained the Scriptures to the Emmaus disciples – and also to us. Rather than joining the ranks of those “scholars” who tell us that the Gospels are an invention of the Evangelists (have you heard the latest, that the Shroud is the Resurrection?), let us continue to look to the Lord, who “opens our minds to understand the Scriptures.”

What was Jesus doing? He was busy!!

Angie Forde

Pachomius first started out as a hermit in the desert, like many of the other men and women in the third and fourth centuries who sought the most radical expression of Christian life. There he developed a very strong bond of friendship with the hermit Palemon. One day during prayer, he had a vision in which he was called to build a monastery, and was told in the vision that many people who were eager to live an ascetic life in the desert, but were not inclined to the solitary life of a hermit, would come and join him.  His hermit friend, Palemon, helped him to build the monastery and Pachomius insisted that his cenobites were to aspire to the austerity of the hermits.

However, Pchomius knew that his idea was a radical one, because most of the men who came to live in his monastery had only ever conceived of the eremitic lifestyle. His great accomplishment was to reconcile this desire for austere perfection with an openness to fulfilling the mundane requirements of community life as an expression of Christian love and service. He spent most of his first years as a cenobitic doing all the menial work on his own, knowing that his brother monks needed to be gently inducted into serving their brothers in the same manner.  He therefore allowed them to devote all their time to spiritual exercises in those first years.  At his death, there were eleven Pachomian monasteries: nine for men and two for women.

The rule that Pachomius drew up was said to have been dictated to him by an angel, and it is this rule that both St. Benedict in the west and St. Basil in the east drew upon to develop their better known rules of cenobitic life. St. Pachomius died in the year 346.