I Will Make You a Light to the Nations!

Get ready.  the time is near!   Isaiah speaks God's glorious words today in our first reading from Mass:  "I am made glorious in the sight of the LORD and my God is now my strength!"  "I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."

As we enter Holy Week and journey through the many ways God's love will be so evident this week, I cannot help but anticipate and feel the JOY of his Resurrection beginning to steadily pulse in my heart, in my veins in the very marrow of my bones.  

Once a friend shared a story with me of his dying mother telling his dad that, if she "had to do it all over again, she wouldn't change a thing."  I will never forget this expression of love, while knowing the cost of suffering that had filled her life through the years.  Their marriage was not always a supportive and loving experience.  Still, there was a love, deeper than the pain, that she wanted to make sure her husband knew.

As I approach our holiest of days, I hear Jesus saying the say thing to me.   "My Passion, my arrest and scourging, the ridicule and torture, the death walk to Calvary . . . the excruciating pain of being nailed to a tree ?   If I had to do it all over again for you, I wouldn't change a thing." 

Your love, Lord, makes me rejoice beyond anything else that may give me joy.   I thank you with all my heart for your great love for me.    May I return that love, over and over throughout my life.