At first blush, it's hard not to think of all this as a shambles - and a disgraceful shambles at that. The noise, the smells, the poor lighting, the rather garish rotunda dome, the barely repressed competition of the various Christian communities... Christians conducting a form of civil war over what they all agree are the most important places in human history? And yet, and yet... you notice, being a Sunday morning, that the Mass being celebrated by the Franciscans is not the usual Mass for that Sunday, but the Mass of Easter... reminded, as you've never before, that every Sunday is Easter, the day of the Lord's Resurrection... Then you kiss the rock of Calvary, and the Stone of Unction, and the Holy Sepulchre itself - and none of the rest makes any difference at all. Then the squawking Copts and the emaciated Ethiopians and the surly Greek Orthodox and the torpid Franciscans all seem somehow transformed. If God came searching for us in history, if the Son of God redeemed us in the flesh, then why be repelled by the grittiness of it all? God wasn't, and neither was God's son.Weigel is not condoning the divisions and occasional violence that confront pilgrims to the Church of the Sepulchre. Rather, he is suggesting that in the bigger picture, it doesn't matter, because Christ has redeemed the world in its grittiness, not despite it. We can look at this grittiness in several ways. Grittiness within religion is unique to Christianity, in that the stuff of the universe, physical matter - like bread, water and oil - are used by God in the sacraments to impart his grace. Ultimately, the grittiness of Catholicism is to show the importance of the physical universe. In some religions of past and present, the ultimate goal was to remove oneself from the physical world, to experience nirvana or ecstatic contemplation free from physical boundaries. In gnosticism, Christianity fought a foe that claimed physicality was an illusion and therefore of no consequence. (Relativism is the best example of a gnostic revival, with its claim that nothing has meaning and what we do in life is ultimately purposeless.) Yet God came to live in this grittiness, in the frail human form. By His Incarnation he deigned to be born in a smelly, dirty, cold stable. Emmanuel, God-with-us, showed by his birth that a gritty humanity has dignity and worth beyond measure.
In this month of June, the Holy Father invites us to pray that the world might grow in compassion, that each one of us might find consolation in a personal relationship with Jesus, and from his Heart, learn to have compassion on the world.
Gianpaolo gives us a behind the scenes look at his upcoming Behold segment on the York University Catholic Chaplaincy.
On Sunday, June 8, 2025, Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass for the Jubilee of Movements, Associations, and New Communities and spoke about how the Holy Spirit helps the apostles overcome "their fear, shatters their inner chains, heals their wounds, anoints them with strength and grants them the courage to go out to all and to proclaim God’s mighty works."
Pope Leo XIV celebrated Mass for the Jubilee of Families, Children, Grandparents, and the Elderly and referred to Pope Francis and mentioned spouses who have been beatified and canonized, like the parents of St. Therese of the Child Jesus.
Pope Leo XIV chose his name primarily to highlight his most recent namesake Leo XIII, whose "historic encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question" to the challenges of his time. What concerns does the encyclical address? How does it speak to its time? And what has been its legacy 134 years later?