Through the Catholic faith, God has revealed to us the mystery and meaning of our human nature. Our fundamental identity rests in our relationship with the One who created, saved, and sanctified us.
Category: Bishop Hying’s Columns
The Resurrection and its place in our lives
Matthew is the only Gospel to narrate the plot of the chief priests in Jerusalem to discredit the truth of the Resurrection of Jesus by bribing the guards at the tomb to say that the disciples had stolen the body of Jesus at night. (Matthew 28: 11-15)
Embrace Holy Saturday
In celebrating the Sacred Triduum, we can easily pass over the significance of Holy Saturday. We move from the pathos of Good Friday to the joy of the Easter Vigil on Saturday night, with just a few brief hours in between.
‘It is finished’
Jesus’ final words from the Cross were: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46) and “It is finished.” (John 19:30) With this, Christ dies, handing His life over to the Father.
Satisfying Christ’s ‘thirst’
“I thirst,” Jesus said in John 19:28. Imagine how physically thirsty Jesus was on the Cross!
Behold your mother
“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother’. And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.” (John 19: 25-27)
Preparing for the Kingdom
As we well know, two criminals were crucified on either side of Jesus, as narrated in Luke 23: 37-43.
Preparing for Lent: Finding growth and God’s will
Every Christian should visit the Holy Land at least once. Called the “Fifth Gospel,” Israel’s holy sites make the Scriptures come alive, reminding us that the story of our salvation, culminating in Christ, is not a myth or a beautiful idea, but actual events in specific places at particular historical moments.
Life is a ‘masterpiece’
In a reflection on Psalm 139, Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “In the second part of the Psalm, God turns his loving gaze upon the human being, whose full and complete beginning is reflected upon. He is still an unformed substance in his mother’s womb: the Hebrew term used has been understood by several biblical experts as referring to an embryo, described in that term as a small, oval, curled-up reality, but on which God has already turned his benevolent and loving eyes . . .”
It’s time for a Eucharistic Revival
As we have celebrated the wonder of the Word made flesh in the Christmas season, we know that the Eucharist is the sacramental fullness of Jesus Christ’s presence, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.