Jeanie Hannaman

By Father Raymond J. de Souza, National Catholic Register - The fifth word from the cross is the shortest: “I thirst.”... It is the only time that Jesus speaks of his physical pain and suffering. The sufferings were intense. Along the Via Crucis, we mark those three falls of Jesus. The suffering and the pain under the weight of the cross were pushing Jesus down. We know that his passion took an enormous physical toll, because after Jesus had died on the cross, and the report is given to Pilate, he is surprised that Jesus has died so quickly. It was possible for people to hang on a cross for days. The debilitating cruelty of the Passion — the scourging, the crowning with thorns — had already weakened Jesus.

By Kennedy Hall, Crisis Magazine - Have you heard? The world is going to Hell in a handbasket. Our politicians are devils, our hierarchs are often devils themselves, and Catholics are leaving the Church in droves. The media lies to us, and our institutions turn our children into post-modern pill-addicted zombies who can’t be happy in a society where they lack no creature comfort... Marriages are failing, and a lot of men are addicted to vile images of perversion that they sneakily watch on their phones while standing in a corner on the metro on their way home to their families.

By Phil Lawler, Catholic Culture - On Holy Thursday, our thoughts and prayers focus on the astonishing gift of the Eucharist. My own meditations invariably touch on a theme that was a favorite of the late Jesuit theologian, Father Donald Keefe, about the historic reality of the Eucharist... There can be no Eucharist without the Church. There can be no Church without the Eucharist. But this is not a chicken-or-the-egg situation; in this case there should be no doubt which comes first. On any given Sunday (or weekday), the Church makes it possible to celebrate the Eucharist. But in the timetable of Divine Providence, sub specie aeternitatis, it is the Eucharist that creates the possibility of the Church.