Dear Parishioners,
We are blessed here at Saint Paul of the Cross with beautiful Stations of the Cross. You’ve been previewing some of them as the bulletin covers the last few weeks. This week’s bulletin cover is the 5th Station – Simon Helps Jesus Carry the Cross. I love all of our Stations, but I particularly find this one striking. It is not my favorite Station – next week I’ll reveal that secret – but I do want to make a few comments about it.
Dear Parishioners,
The Samaritan woman at the well (last week’s Gospel) and the man born blind (this week’s Gospel) both had conversions and became disciples of Jesus, but their paths to those destinations were slightly different.
Dear Parishioners,
I always pictured in my mind the scene of Moses striking the rock to produce water (our first reading) as a downward blow. That is, the rock was on the ground, like a boulder, and Moses plunged his staff to the earth. The rock then burst water like a geyser or a fire hydrant. But then I looked recently at a painting of the scene by the famous Italian painter, Jacopo Tintoretto, from 1563 (see image below). The rock in this illustration is more like a cliff hanging above and Moses is striking upward. The rock wall bursts turns into, more or less, a waterfall. People collect the water pouring down from bowls, as opposed to scooping it up from the geyser scenario.
Father James Wallace grew up in Winnetka, Illinois and attended Sts. Faith Hope and Charity grammar school, New Trier High School, and then The George Washington University in Washington DC, where he earned his undergraduate degree in Political Science in 2007. He attended seminary at The Pontifical North American College in Rome and was ordained a priest in 2012 for the Archdiocese of Chicago. In addition to being the pastor of Saint Paul of the Cross Parish, he serves as a canon lawyer for the Archdiocese, a dean in Vicariate II, and a professor of canon law and spiritual director at Mundelein Seminary. He is also one of the featured Mercy Home Sunday Mass celebrants, airing Sundays at 9:30am on WGN.
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