Luke 22:14 - 23:56 (links validated 3/24/22)

Recommended Resources

{Based on requests from several members (although I am reluctant to do so since my favorites may not be those of others), I am listing here some of my own favorite resources. FWIW!!]
  • Palm Sunday (C)(2001)

    by Jerry Fuller, OMI
    ("Shel Silverstein's parable The Giving Tree chronicles the interaction between a tree and a boy, who grows to old age as the story unfolds. In what can only be described as a one-sided relationship, the tree was content to give everything she had to the boy, including a frolic in her leaves, the shade of her full branches and her apples..." and another short illustration)
  • The Enormity of Love

    by Sil Galvan
    So I think we need to consider two things this week: first of all, how much our Lord so willingly suffered in his Passion and death. And these facts of his Passion should not turn our stomachs, but our hearts. They should turn our hearts to realize the enormity of God's love for us. Which brings us to the second point: no matter how great the enormity of evil, greater still is the enormity of God's love and his goodness. And this love is reflected in the heroism of his children, inasmuch as we are all God's children. All we need to do to remind ourselves of fact is to consider the actions of some people over the years in Colombine, CO, Sandy Hook, CT, in Christ Church, NZ, etc. who were willing to sacrifice their lives to save the lives of others, just as our Lord sacrificed his life to save all of his children. Would it be any wonder that Jesus would meet them all at the gates of heaven and speak to them the words which he spoke to Dismus, the Good Thief, from the cross: "This day you will be with me in paradise."
  • He Learned Obedience

    by Terrance Klein, SJ
    (includes an extended quote from Soren Kierkegaard)
  • Christ the King (C)

    by Bill Loader
    (always good insights!!)
  • Passion Sunday (C)

    by Bill Loader
  • Christ the King (Luke 23:33-43)

    by Brian Stoffregen
    ("Robert Capon in Hunting the Divine Fox presents a wonderful picture of our typical American Messiah -- and it doesn't look much like Jesus on the cross....")
  • Exegetical Notes (Luke 22:1-23.56)

    by Brian Stoffregen
    (excellent exegesis)
  • Illustrations, Quotes and Lectionary Reflections (Palm Sunday)(ABC)

    by Various Authors
    ("Some years ago a book was written by Gene Smith, a noted American historian. The title was When The Cheering Stopped. It was the story of President Woodrow Wilson and the events leading up to and following WWI. When that war was over Wilson was an international hero. There was a great spirit of optimism abroad, and people actually believed that the last war had been fought..." and many more)

Narrative Sermons

  • The Witness of Simon of Cyrene

    by Peter Blackburn
    ("What a Passover this is! It's a long way from Cyrene to Jerusalem - in Africa and well west of Alexandria. I managed to catch a boat this year, a cargo vessel with a few passengers and some Roman troops as well...")
  • Jesus of the Palms, Jesus of the Thorns

    by Michael Burns
    ("My name is Simon; I hail from a beautiful and proud city off the coast of North Africa called Cyrene. It is a proud city...")
  • Jesus, Remember Me

    by Terrance Klein
    Truth ties us together. It draws us to itself. Lies isolate the soul, like a fly in a web, sadly, one woven by the self. The first thing I ever stole was one of Caesar’s coins, neglected by a drunken Roman soldier. I told myself that it was a righteous act, to take from those who had stolen our country. The Romans never conquered a single land, you know. They always came as invited liberators. At least that’s what they said. Lies.
  • The Unrepentant Brigand

    Narrative Sermon by Bill Loader
  • Hey Sanna, Ho Sanna

    by Edward Markquart
    ("What a day. You couldn't believe it. It was like a carnival. It was like a circus. It was like a parade. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were jammed into the holiest of holy cities...")
  • Between Parades

    by James McCrea
  • Gethsemane

    by Fay Rowland
  • Thomas' Testimony

    by J. Barrie Shepherd
    ("Yes, they always said I questioned everything – too much for my own good, was the way they used to put it. Although, since that evening in the Upper Room when he offered me his hands and side, the nail prints, spear wound to touch and know, I've never doubted him again. And yet, I still have questions...")
  • Where Are His Friends?

    by Pamela Tinnin
    ("On the thirteenth anniversary of my birth, my life changed forever. Our family had come into Jerusalem for the Passover and we had stayed over so Mama could be with her youngest sister Althea for the birth of her first child...")

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from 2019 to 2022

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  • God Is Guilty?

    by Jim Chern
    Editors of news sources whether print or virtual as well as television executives recognize that for Christians, Holy Week and Easter will cause even the most casual of church-goers to think, to some extent, about the Passion of Jesus Christ. So you will find more media covering different aspects of the life, passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus now than at any other time of the year. One of these special editions a few years ago that caught my attention at a supermarket checkout had a cover with the question “who really killed Jesus?” on it. You think that would be a pretty cut and dry question to answer – how would they milk an entire magazine cover story out of it? But they explored different aspects of the passion narratives from the Gospels, including this one from Luke we just proclaimed and look at the list of possible defendants:...
  • Jesus' Passion: Do We Give a Damn?

    by Jim Chern
    Back in the 1920’s – a couple of college students who had spent the afternoon drinking were passing a Church. They noticed that confessions were being heard inside and thought it would be funny to try to come up with the most outrageous, scandalous, list of sins they could think of for someone to commit to see how shocked they could make the priest and to see what kind of reaction he would have in response. So they did, they came up with the list but they couldn’t agree who would be so brave to go into the confessional and try to do this goof on the priest. One of the guys looked to the guy, John, who had initiated the whole thing – who wasn’t even Catholic by the way – and said “It was your idea, put up or shut up – I bet you $20 you don’t have the guts to do it.” So John did, he went into the confessional, gave the priest the wild list of sins that was thought up by the group and a few minutes later came running out of the Church with a piece of paper in his hand laughing as he said “Pay up!” They asked “What did he say?” and John responded “Nothing, as I went through the whole list of stuff, he never said a word -at the end he just handed this to me and said it’s my penance” – they asked him – “did you do it?” To which John laughed “Come on… don’t be stupid, I’m not going to do it…” And the friends pushed back “well you didn’t really do the whole confession thing then, and if you didn’t do the whole thing, we’re not giving you the $20.” So John went back into the Church and read the note The paper said “kneel before the crucifix at the altar and repeat 10 times – All this you did for me and I don’t give a damn.“...
  • There Are Two Responses to Sin: Shame and Compassion

    by Terrance Klein
    When all the world hates you, an act of kindness means “all the world” to you. Before his great fall from favor, his conviction in a British court for the crime of sodomy, Oscar Wilde was, after Queen Victoria, the most famous person in Britain. A celebrated playwright and wit, the world (or at least the highest reaches of British society) belonged to him. Oscar Wilde wrote a letter in prison, which he later entitled De Profundis, the opening lines in Latin of Psalm 130: “Out of the depths I call to you, O Lord” (1). Though he confessed himself guilty, Wilde presented his own suffering as patterned upon that of Christ. “Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Someday people will realize what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do.” Before you chafe at comparing Wilde, or anyone else, to Christ, remember it was the Lord who compared himself and made himself equal to those who suffer. Wilde, therefore, is quite right. “Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.”...
  • When Did the Agony of Christ Begin?

    by Terrance Klein
    The Greek word agōnia means anguish, distress or struggle. The last is significant. It suggests that Jesus knows what the Father has asked of him, and he must strive within himself to accept his fate. In the garden, the voice of the Father has fallen silent, as if to give the Son his own space. The Father has made known his will. The Son struggles to accept it. Yet heaven remains close to Christ in the consolation of the angel...
  • Blessed By Being Seen

    by Ron Rolheiser, OMI
    A couple of years ago, a family that I know had a painful incident with their 13-year-old daughter. She was caught shoplifting. As things, turned out, she was stealing things that she neither needed or wanted. Moreover, in her case, her stealing these things was not, as it often is among teens, something intended to impress peers, a little rite of passage necessary for acceptance into a group of friends. Without her saying so, she was stealing to get her father’s attention. Her father, struggling in his relationship to her mother, was not around a great deal and didn’t give a lot of attention to his daughter. So she forced his hand. It was he that she demanded come to the police station to pick her up and settle things with the police. In doing that he had to give his daughter his attention. He had to look at her. Her shoplifting was a way of forcing her father to see her...
  • The Unexpected God

    by David Lose
    Sometimes when you read a familiar passage, you wonder just what you’ll preach on this time, and sometimes – and oh, how nice it is when this happens! – sometimes something entirely new jumps out at you. That’s what happened to me this week at the prompting of one of the readers of this column. Earlier this week, one of you wrote to me and observed that in Luke’s version of the Passion, Peter denies Jesus three times and Pilate proclaims his innocence three times. The preacher writing asked if this was significant. And, to tell you the truth, I’d never noticed that before. Peter’s triple denial, yes; Pilate’s triple pronouncement of innocence, no. While it’s always hard to say for sure which details are intentional, I tend to err on the side of assuming that the writers of our Gospels are artists, usually quite intention with details, especially when they differ from their compatriots’ accounts...
  • The View from the Cross

    by David Sellery
    Why the cross? The human Jesus clearly wished he were somewhere else. The divine Jesus didn’t have to show up. He could have phoned in our redemption. The answer is clearly seen in the transformational power of the cross…from an instrument of torture to the transcendent symbol of love. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. What evil has ever existed or ever will exist that cannot be overwhelmed by the cross? What sacrilege, what obscenity, what betrayal overshadows the love that hung Jesus on the cross? Christ crucified is the “Big Bang” of God’s grace. The reverberations still carry down the centuries to generations yet unborn. And yet for a moment, it all hung by a thread. In Gethsemane, sweating blood in anticipation of literally shedding his last drop of blood, Jesus asks: Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done...

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from 2016 to 2018

  • Jesus Suffering Today

    by Phil Bloom
    We just listened to St. Luke's account of Jesus' suffering, death and burial. These events not only happened 2000 years ago - they continue today. Earlier this month gunmen entered a home care center in Yemen. They handcuffed security guards, nurses and volunteers. Then one by one they murdered 16 people including four religious sisters - members of Blessed Mother Teresa's order.
  • New Ways of Being Alive

    by Dan Clendenin
    In a passage that could have been written specifically for Palm Sunday and the passion of our Lord, Kate Bowler writes: "The prosperity gospel has taken a religion based on the contemplation of a dying man and stripped it of its call to surrender all. Perhaps worse, it has replaced Christian faith with the most painful forms of certainty. The movement has perfected a rarefied form of America’s addiction to self-rule, which denies much of our humanity: our fragile bodies, our finitude, our need to stare down our deaths (at least once in a while) and be filled with dread and wonder. At some point, we must say to ourselves, I’m going to need to let go."
  • The Passion Hurts

    by MaryAnn McKibben Dana
    Sarah Vowell has a piece called "Shooting Dad," featured some years ago on This American Life. It's about her father, who builds cannons and other armaments as a hobby. Sarah is a pacifist and has a hard time understanding her father's gun-loving avocation, and the essay is about how the two work through that. Near the end, Sarah reveals that her father, after he dies, wants his ashes to be blasted out of the cannon into the Montana wilderness he loves.
  • The Wounded God Meets Us in Our Wounds

    by Andrew J. Hege
    The other gods were strong; but Thou wast weak; They rode, but Thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds speak; And not a god has wounds, but Thou alone. – Edward Shillito, “Jesus of the Scars,” 1917
  • The Donkey

    Art and Faith by Lynn Miller
    Hippolyte Flandrin's nineteenth-century painting of the subject shows a very balanced, almost rigid event. Strong horizontals (the road, the top of the crowd of heads, the city architecture) are perpendicularly counterpointed by strong verticals (Jesus' body, the crowd of people mostly standing upright, the palm branches, the vertical lines of the city wall)
  • Holding Up the Kingdom Vision

    by Nancy Rockwell
    The Kingdom of God: Jesus challenged the kingdoms of this world ceaselessly with his provocative What Ifs about our world. Don’t like the powers that be? What if God were the ruler here? Tired of news about murder, hopelessness, angry young men choosing to be terrorists? What if this were God’s kingdom? Angry about your taxes? What if God, not Caesar, were asking you to cough up – what would it cost you then?
  • The Trail of Tears That Leads to Easter

    by Nancy Rockwell
    consider the instances in which Jesus raised the dead, and consider the essential tears shed by those who loved them without end. Lazarus; Jairus’ daughter; the motionless, speechless paralytic; the daughter of the foreign-born Syrophoenician woman. In each of these tales, Jesus responds to the grief of someone who loved them. grief for the one who has died, is dying, is paralyzed. Jesus grieves for the tears that howl from that mourner, and from their grief-born connection Jesus generates the force for resurrection.
  • The Yes-Man

    by David Sellery
    C.S. Lewis captured this duality when he described this Passion as: “The perfect surrender and humiliation undergone by Christ: perfect because he was God, surrender and humiliation because he was man.” To say this is a difficult concept to understand and accept is beyond understatement. Why the cross? The human Jesus clearly wished he were somewhere else. The divine Jesus didn’t have to show up. He could have phoned in our redemption.
  • Passion Sunday

    by Robert Warren
    The most recognisable song from “Les Misérables” is set amidst the decay and turmoil of Paris in the 1830’s. The song is defiant and hopeful. It is a young person’s song. The voice of the people will lead the way. They can be trusted to do the right thing. Well that’s the theory anyway.

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from 2013 to 2015

  • Palm/Passion Sunday (C)(2013)

    by Delmer Chilton
    It seems an American was vacationing in a small fishing village. On Sunday, he attended services in the ancient church, which dated back almost a thousand years. He went early so as to see everything. There was one thing that stood out. During the prelude, everyone who came in stopped halfway down the aisle and, turning to the right, bowed in the direction of the blank wall. Everybody, no exceptions. When the choir and the pastor came in, they too stopped and bowed to the blank wall. After the service, the visitor stood outside and talked to a few folks who knew English and eventually he asked them about the practice of bowing to the blank wall. And they all said, “We don’t know, we’ve always done that.’’ he asked the pastor. He said, “I don’t know. They were doing that when I came and I saw no reason to stop them” The pastor did promise to find out and write the visitor. A few months later he received a letter from the Danish pastor. When the church was built, around the year 1150 AD, there had been a mural of the Madonna and Child painted on that spot on the wall. At the time of the Reformation, when the Danish church went from Catholic to Lutheran, the mural was painted over and the people were instructed to stop bowing to the wall. But the people of the village ignored a long line of ministers telling them to stop bowing to the wall, until the clergy gave up, and eventually the people and the pastors all bowed to the wall and all forgot why...
  • April Fool?

    by Rob Elder
    ("Christine and I were in Oklahoma City last summer for my a high school reunion, which was held a few block away from the site of the old Federal Building. You may recall it was a building which Timothy McVeigh decided would be a good symbol to destroy, killing a host of innocent people in the process, including little children ion the building's preschool...")
  • The Power of Darkness

    by Rob Elder
    ("In the island nation of Haiti, in the ragged city of Port au Prince, there is an Episcopalian Cathedral, in which you can find another depiction of the last supper. In the scene, Peter and Judas are depicted as white people, because, after all, they both denied Jesus, and white was the skin color of those devils who once enslaved the people of Haiti. The rest of the disciples are black...")
  • Who's on Trial? (Luke 22:39-46)

    by Rob Elder
    ("I remember the scene from the film Titanic, when the rich antagonist offered one of the ship's officers a fistful of money to let him have a seat on the lifeboat. The officer looked at him incredulously. What good would money be to him, who would, in the space of a few hours, be dead? What could he buy with it that would be of value to him? The wealthy man thought he was offering what was precious...")
  • The Successful Completion of the Mission

    by Janet Hunt
    ("'The successful completion of the mission was never seriously in doubt.' His grown children were quoting their dad as we sat and planned his memorial service. Apparently this was his signature line, one they heard so often that when they spoke of him they also spoke this in unison. Without a doubt, as they were quick to share, these words and all they represented had been gift and challenge...")
  • Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion (C)(2013)

    by Alex McAllister
    "The key concept we need to employ here is the one of paradox. If you want to understand anything about Jesus then you have to understand paradox. Everything is the opposite to what it seems and all that he does appears to the outside world as a contradiction..."
  • Betrayed

    by Rick Miles
    At Saratoga, on a battlefield that once was covered with British and American blood, there stands a monument, one-hundred-and-fifty-five-feet high. The monument is there to commemorate that decisive struggle in which the British made their last stand over two centuries ago. Around the base of this monument are four deep niches. In each niche appears the name of one of the American generals who commanded there. Above the names stand giant bronze figures on horseback. In the first stands Horatio Gates, in the second, Philip john Schuyler, and in the third, Daniel Morgan. But the niche on the fourth side is vacant. The name appears, but the soldier is absent. Some who are history buffs might remember that the soldier whose name is listed there was a brigadier general in the American army and had once commanded West Point. His was a distinguished career up until one decisive moment when he decided to betray his country. His name? Benedict Arnold. In the mind of every American that name stands for betrayal...
  • The Battleground

    by Alex Thomas
    ("I remember years ago in early seventies singing the song Sit Down Young Stranger during the service on Passion Sunday. It had be written by Gordon Lightfoot around 1967 and I believe it was trying to deal with our way of life and a search for what is real and authentic in our world...")
  • Palm/Passion Sunday (C)(2013)

    by Nathan Howard Yoder
    There is one phrase I will always associate with my father. Whenever presiding at a meeting or teaching a class, he will invariably begin with a simple, 5-word statement. 'Let us honor the hour'. In a tone peaceful, but firm. Mouths close, ears open, and the work begins. We are here today to honor the hour, the hour that St. Luke indicates in his gospel: 'And when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him'...

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from 2007 to 2012

  • The Passion of Jesus

    by Lawrence Clark
    ("I decided that we needed to get a good definition of passion, so I went to my Webster's dictionary and found the word 'passion: to have a strong feeling or emotion'. But passion is also a technical term for the suffering and the agony of Jesus that led directly to the crucifixion, a central Christian event...")
  • He's Subverting Our Nation

    by Daniel Clendenin
    ("Consider this 'snapshot' from the Epistle to Diognetus that captures the ambiguous space that Christians of that day occupied in their society: 'For the Christians are distinguished from other people neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech...")
  • Living Life with a Goal

    by Tom Cox
    ["Early travellers journeyed by the stars, in a sense they still do with Satellite Navigation (SatNav) technology. But mistakes are still possible. One hapless ambulance crew on a routine 8 mile journey with a patient realised several hours and 200 miles later that their SatNav had unerringly brought them to a hospital of the same name but in a different city..."]
  • The Crowd

    by Scott Daniels
    ("They didn't know the hope that my friend Elizabeth knows. My friends, Granvel and Elizabeth, had a son named, Gene, who was born with cerebral palsy. While the doctors were unsure how long Gene would live, it became very apparent that Elizabeth's life would be forever changed because of this child.....")
  • Palm Sunday (C)(2007)

    by Andrew Greeley
    ("Once there was a woman stock broker who presided over a very successful mutal fund. It was a highly speculative fund and identified as such. It made, as the teens would say, tons of money, gaining twice as much as the Dow during its first year. The woman was a hero to everyone but rivals in her own company...")
  • Palms and Passion: The Work of Holy Week

    by Debra Dean Murphy
    "As Fleming Rutledge has noted, 'the liturgy of Palm Sunday is set up to show you how you can say one thing one minute and its opposite the next. This is the nature of the sinful human being.' In looking at the cruxifixion, Rutledge also says this: 'What we see and hear in Jesus' death is not just his solidarity with the victims of this world..."
  • His Last Supper

    Sermon Starter by Leonard Sweet
    ("Jesus' final week can be divided into three phases. The first two days of the week find the masses in a mood of acceptance and praise. The middle of the week they began to question and challenge. By the end of the week their attitude had completely changed to rejection and crucifixion....")
  • At a Distance

    by Theodore Wardlaw
    ("Several years ago I attended a museum exhibit featuring the works of Vincent van Gogh. It was not an altogether pleasant experience because there was a man in my group who had a peculiar way of taking in each painting. He would stand about an inch away and then move slowly from one side to another, examining each strand of canvas, each dollop of paint...")
  • Abraham's Faith and Ours

    by Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson
    ("Who was this Pontius Pilate anyways? What kind of a person was he? Let’s take a closer look. Pontius Pilate, according to an inscription verified by archaeologists in 1961, in Caesarea Maritima, was Roman Prefect of Judea. He held this office for ten years, from A.D. 26-36...")
  • Seven Responses to the Cross: Forgiveness and Mission

    by Bob Yates
    A man was awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call. On the other end a frantic, sobbing girl managed to get out the words, 'Daddy, I'm pregnant.' He was groggy and stunned but communicated his forgiveness and prayed with her...
  • The Street Sweeper

    Narrative Sermon by Timothy Zingale

Illustrated Resources (and Other Resources of Merit) from the Archives

  • Ironic!

    by Steven Albertin
    ("Nothing catches our attention like irony. Irony catches us by surprise. It is the experience of unexpected, of just the opposite of what we had anticipated, that grabs our attention. We expect one thing, but then get just the opposite. That is irony. On one of the most popular musical albums of the last decade, Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morisette, there was a very poignant song called Ironic...")
  • Passion Sunday (C)(2004)

    by Mark Anschutz
    ("His name is Jim. His father had been hard on him-never physically-but with a coldness that may have been for him far worse than physical acts. He was one of the multitude of persons who suffered mightily simply because he had never heard his father utter the simple words, 'I love you'..." and other short illustrations)
  • The Other Kingdom

    by Michael Battle
    ("Consider the HBO series The Sopranos, which has significantly raised the level of violence on television. Last year, producers decided that America’s favorite mob boss had become a little too lovable. The show was presenting a main character who was too cuddly for a hard-edged series...")
  • Maundy Thursday (A)(2005)

    by Sarah Dylan Breuer
    ("There's a totally wonderful episode of The Simpsons, Season 2 called One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish. In it, Homer Simpson, the bumbling father of the family, is told that the blowfish he has eaten was not properly prepared, and so is poisonous -- he has 24 hours to live...")
  • My Day in Court

    by John Christianson
    ("I have to tell you about the time I was arrested. It was a few years ago now – a Monday afternoon – my day off. The doorbell rang and there were two police officers standing at my door. 'Is there a John Christianson at this address?' one of them asked. 'I’m John Christianson,' I said. The first thing I thought was that there’d been a traffic accident or something...")
  • The Full Picture

    by Tom Cox
    ("Many adults find that technology eludes them. Even the innocent job of video recording a programme can defy. If you’re lucky, you can draft in your average 5 year old to effortlessly achieve that task, Otherwise the result is a library of video recordings with labels saying 'beginning missing', 'ending missing', or 'Parts missing'...")
  • As One Who Serves

    by Adrian Dieleman
    ("Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's Hamburgers, writes: 'I got my M.B.A. long before my General Equivalency Degree. I even have a photograph of me in my M.B.A. graduation outfit -- a snazzy knee-length work apron. I guarantee you that I'm the only founder among America's big companies whose picture in the corporate annual report shows him wielding a mop and a plastic bucket...")
  • I Have Bought You Back

    by Adrian Dieleman
    ("A father and son worked for months to build a toy sailboat. Every night when he came home from work, the man and his boy would disappear into the garage for hours. It was a labor of love--love for each other and for the thing they were creating. The wooden hull was painted bright red and it was trimmed with gleaming white sails...")
  • Jesus Came to Serve

    by Adrian Dieleman
    ("In the 1993 hit film In the Line of Fire, Clint Eastwood played Secret Service agent Frank Horrigan. Horrigan had protected the life of the President for more than three decades, but he was haunted by the memory of what had happened thirty years before. Horrigan was a young agent assigned to President Kennedy on that fateful day in Dallas in 1963..." and other illustrations)
  • Who's On Trial?

    by Robert Elder
    ("I remember the scene from the film Titanic, when the rich antagonist offered one of the ship's officers a fistful of money to let him have a seat on the lifeboat. The officer looked at him incredulously. What good would money be to him, who would, in the space of a few hours, be dead? What could he buy with it that would be of value to him?...")
  • He Died for Us

    by Ernest Munachi Ezeogu, CSSP
    "Two brothers lived together in the same apartment. The elder brother was an honest, hard-working and God-fearing man and the younger a dishonest, gun-totting substance-abusing rogue. Many a night the younger man would come back into the apartment late, drunk and with a lot of cash and the elder brother would spend hours pleading with him to mend his ways and live a decent life..."
  • He Had It All. He Gave It All Up.

    by Vince Gerhardy
    ("A youth group presented a dramatisation of Jesus' trial and crucifixion. The youth director played the role of Christ, the young people the jeering mob. "Crucify him! Crucify him!" they shouted, and then they dragged the youth director into the back yard of the church and hung him up on an improvised cross..." and other illustrations)
  • Passion Sunday (B)(1997)

    by Andrew Greeley
    ("Once upon a time two young people were planning a summer trip to Europe (we will leave gender out of it lest we be accused of stereotyping). For months they talked about almost nothing else. The read all the books, they studied all the maps, they bought the right clothes and the right luggage so they could travel light...")
  • A View from the Cross

    by John Jewell
    ("Years ago, during a winter storm, one of my sons ran my Chevrolet Blazer into a ditch. Amazingly, the thing was totaled! It is a long story, but suffice it to say that my insurance did not cover the damage. About $4000.00 would come out of my pocket...")
  • The Best of Times, the Worst of Times

    by Paul Larsen
    ("There is an old Chinese story about a poor farmer who had a single horse on which he depended for his living. One day a bee stung the horse and the frightened animal ran off. The old farmer couldn’t find him. His neighbors came by and said, We are really sorry about your bad luck in losing your horse...")
  • Silence Is Not Golden

    by Paul Larsen
    ("A young woman was about to leave home for her freshman year of college. Her mother sat down with her and reminded her that going to a large, secular institution could present some challenges for her faith. She warned her that she might encounter some people who made fun of her because she was a Christian..." and other short illustrations)
  • God...Almighty

    by David Leininger
    ("In Russell Baker's book Growing Up, he talks about being five years old and losing his 33-year-old father to an acute diabetic coma. His mother had still not returned from the hospital, but with what had happened, young Russell was taken over to the home of one of the neighbors, Bessie Scott. He writes: 'Poor Bessie Scott. All afternoon she listened patiently as a saint while I sat in her kitchen and cried myself out...")
  • Suffered, Died and Was Buried

    by David Leininger
    ("An incident in the life of Ghandi can illustrate. In 1922, the independence movement in India was beginning to pick up tremendous momentum and along with it, a deep-seated hatred for the British. Ghandi, of course, was a leading light in that movement and a strong believer in its eventual success but ONLY if the struggle were carried on by non-violent means...")
  • God of the Mountain

    by Bill Loader
    ("The spike of the club had pierced her right temple. Inside the brain was now pressed to the left side by the blow, the right side filled with blood, preserved in the frozen corpse, a human sacrifice from Inca times found atop Mount Ampato in Peru. The museum video in Arequipa explained how the 12 year old girl will have been prepared to die for her people...")
  • Save Us from Our Crosses

    by Edward Markquart
    ("She came walking into entry to the church offices. I spoke to her, 'Rachel, how are you today?' She said, 'Rotten'. 'I am sorry to hear that,' I responded. She continued, 'I have been down in the dumps lately. I haven’t been myself. I just haven’t been right... ")
  • Cracks in the Old Creation

    by Heather Reichgott
    ("There is a story told by theologian Serene Jones. It’s about a Christmas pageant at her church in New Haven. The part of the innkeeper was being played by a homeless man named Reggie. She writes: 'Reggie was to stand in the center aisle and say no to the pregnant Mary and tired Joseph when they asked him for a place to spend the night...")
  • Why Did Jesus Die On a Roman Cross?

    by Ron Ritchie
    ("Mounted above the table and between two windows was a three-foot bronze figure of Christ hanging on an invisible cross. I glanced at the figure briefly and then went over to the window to look out on the garden. Mr. Hofmann asked me to look at the figure again, and when I looked more closely, I was struck by the artist's conception..." and several quotes)
  • Passionate Knees

    by James Standiford
    ("One of the most famous of all devotional classics is a little book by Brother Lawrence entitled, Practicing The Presence of God. Lawrence's job in the monastery was peeling and washing potatoes. His great discovery was that even in doing so mundane a task, he could experience God's presence in his life...")
  • Passion Sunday Meditations

    by Billy D. Strayhorn
    ("Although the pain must have been excruciating beyond compare, for Jesus it wasn't the nails that hurt the most or that cut the deepest. It was the kiss. The kiss of betrayal. The kiss that knowingly set into motion the events leading up to Jesus' crucifixion and death. There have been times when we have all knowingly betrayed Jesus just as easily as Judas...")
  • Christ's Meal of Love

    by Garth Wehrfritz-Hanson
    ("In 1945, just after World War II, there was a meeting of church people in Geneva, Switzerland. Among the people invited were Bishop Berggrav of Norway, and the German, Pastor Martin Niemoeller. Berggrav was a Norwegian who had just spent a long time in a Nazi prison in Norway. Pastor Niemoeller was much worried how he would be able to meet this person who suffered so much from the Nazis...")
  • Behold, the One Who Betrays Me Is With Me

    by William Willimon
    ("Why do we shake hands when we meet? A show of friendliness and warmth? Not so. The handshake originated in Europe, the Middle Ages. Men shook hands when they met (women did not) as a means of checking one another for concealed weapons...")

Other Resources from 2022

Other Resources from 2016 to 2018

Other Resources from 2010 to 2012

Other Resources from 2007 to 2009

Other Resources from 2000 to 2003

Other Resources from the Archives

Children's Resources

The Classics

Recursos en Español

(Luke 23:34) Father, Forgive Them

(Luke 23:46) Father, Into Your Hands

Currently Unavailable

  • Domingo de Pasión

    by Bp. Joseph Madera, M.Sp.S.
  • To Experience the Depth of God's Love

    by John and Robin McCullough-Bade
  • Illustrations

    by Timothy Zingale
  • Sign: Bread and Wine Equals Body and Blood

    by Timothy Zingale
    ("In August of 1900 more than 250 hobos, tramps and freeloaders came by train to a little northwest Iowa town for their first annual National Hobo Convention. They ate free food, drank free beer stayed in free accommodations, played games, drew up a political platform and nominated a candidate for the 1900 Presidential election..." and other illustrations)
  • Jesus' Fan and Giving a Damn

    by Jim Chern
    ("A retired priest was sitting enjoying the afternoon sun and suddenly saw the newly-ordained bishop of the diocese walking towards him. 'Father, may I sit with you awhile?' The old priest was delighted as he welcomed his distinguished guest. 'Father I'd like to tell you a story. Some years ago a group of college students who had spent the afternoon drinking were walking past a little church. Confessions were being heard inside and one of the guys came up with the idea to make a list of the worst things they could think of and confess them...")
  • I've Got You!

    by Jim Chern
    Shannon Johnson and his colleague, Denise Perazea are two names that probably aren’t very recognizable to us, which is understandable.  Being employees for a County Public Health Department in California doesn’t usually draw much attention to us sitting here in New Jersey.  Back in December, these two ordinary people were having an ordinary day at work. What made these two ordinary individuals noteworthy, is what happened moments later.  Two terrorists would burst into this office building in San Bernadino California, that fateful day this past December, unleashing a hail of bullets on all these innocent people, killing 14 people and injuring over 20 more people.
  • Palms or Passion?

    by David Davis
  • Textual Analysis

    by Ernest Peets, Jr.
  • Domingo de Ramos/Pasion (C)(2019)

    por Jude Siciliano, OP