The Holy Spirit symbolizes God’s freedom, breaking monotony and embracing harmony. Its renewing nature acts like the shore to a ship, and a longing for the sea for those at home. God often works in unexpected ways, providing Mary with an unconventional son and Elizabeth with a prophetic son; the Word of God conveys the…

Ascension: the time of bread and fish around the fire on the lakeshore is over. The time of names spoken one by one —names that seemed to burn on his lips—is over. The Ascension is the feast of His presencein a different way: Jesus has not gone far away,but forward and deep within; not beyond…

Seven verses in which Jesus reiterates, seven times, the core of his message: at the beginning of everything and as the fulfillment of everything lies the same act:to love, the cornerstone and keystone of living life. “You are loved” is the foundation of the law, and its fulfillment is: “you shall love.” Anyone who separates…

One of the most uplifting phrases in the Gospel that strengthens my faith is: “I have come that they may have life.” This promise assures me that He guides me toward experiencing a full, abundant, and joyful life—much more than mere existence. The concept of “life” unites all of Scripture, echoing the plea found in…

The Gospel of Emmaus unfolds like a great liturgy in three stages: the liturgy of the road, the liturgy of the Word, and the liturgy of bread. Emmaus is twelve miles from Jerusalem, a three-hour walk during which they talked about the divine hope they had invested so much in, now tarnished by blood on…

One week after the women and the disciples saw the risen Christ, there was still an atmosphere of fear in that house. Fear of the Jews, but also fear of themselves, of their own cowardice, of how they behaved on the night of the betrayal. It feels like there is no air. Despite our unreliable…

At dawn, at first light, almost clandestinely, two women go to the tomb in the garden. They are the same women who on Friday stood, without retreating an inch, around the perimeter of the cross. An angel descended from heaven, rolled away the stone, and sat on it. He did not open the tomb for…

Palm Sunday celebrates a joyful moment in Jesus’ life, with smiles from the Mount of Olives to the temple, which helps reminisce when a friend asked a monk, “Father, do you ever get tired of devoting all your time to God?” We expected him to respond, “How can you be tired of God? That shows…

This Gospel is so descriptive that the heartbreaking beauty of Jesus’ humanity is seen in his trembling, weeping, and engaging nature. He is a God who laughs and cries, involved in the lives of his children, not shying away from the struggles of each one of us. We know important things about Lazarus: he is…

A man born blind, so poor that he possesses only himself. And Jesus stops precisely for him, while others start questioning: why blind? Who sinned? Him or his parents? Jesus immediately distances us from the idea that sin is the explanation for evil, which, at one time, was the cornerstone of religion. The Bible does…