Marking 30 Years of Priesthood: If I Knew Then What I Know Now!
. . . But make no mistake, we will suffer for it. The signs are all around us, and there is no escaping it. Our culture is in for some very hard times. The role of the Church and priesthood in Western Culture is going to be severely tested, and we stand at the precipice. Much of what we have taken for granted in terms of freedoms and rights is about to fall from under us. We are on the verge of cultural disaster, and the faith that our world now laughs at will – if it stands fast – usher the world through another Dark Age. . .
Fr. George David Byers: When Jesus Was in Prison
. . . Many TSW readers know of Anna Katharina Emmerick, who died in 1824, and was beatified on 3 October, 2004, by Blessed John Paul II, only some months after the screening of The Passion of the Christ. Mel Gibson partially based that film on The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, dictated by Anna Katharina to Clemens Brentano, whose secretarial skills seem to have left something to be desired. Nevertheless, The Holy See praises her accounts. She speaks of the Lord’s imprisonment. Although we don’t read of this in the Gospels, there is a space of time that is entirely conspicuous for its lack of description, the hours between the initial questioning and mocking of Jesus that first Holy Thursday evening and the following morning. It is a period of time in which, all things being equal, anybody in Jesus’ position would have been imprisoned for safe keeping until the next day. . . .