Interesting that St. Paul had his life-changing personal encounter with the resurrected Christ many years later despite being a hard-core Pharisee and persecutor of the early church. I firmly believe that we too have our ongoing encounters.

Many know that beyond life is death. But do we know that beyond death is life ? And life depended on Christ’s consent to shedding His blood, without which there would have been no forgiveness of sins . Heb 9:22

Seeing Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem as an “ascent” was a revelation. Geographically, in Luke’s Gospel Jesus travels from the Sea of Galilee (690’ below sea level) to Jerusalem (2500’ above sea level). Jesus’ ascent was in his self-offering on the Cross (Golgotha) i.e. loving to the end on the real mountain of God.

It has been said that a human life is like a sentence: We don’t know its full meaning until the last word has been said. The trajectory of each life from birth is often indiscernible until its course is complete. Then we can look back and see how preference, vision and purpose guided that life to its goal. This is why the last chapter of a life is spent summarizing our experiences. How many people come to know themselves only at the end of the story they have written over the years.

Naturally, it is wholesome to preserve the friendship knowing that in this life there is one to whom you can open your heart, with whom you can share confidences, and to whom you can entrust the secrets of your heart. It is a comfort to have a trusted friend by your side, who will rejoice with you in prosperity, sympathize in troubles, encourage in persecution.

Nothing is more captivating than to see a person poised in complete union with a supernatural presence and absolutely unaware of all that is going on around. And we hasten to say that is spirituality! Nothing can be further from the truth.

It was a known fact among the non-Israelites that Jerusalem had been destroyed and the people were exiled in Babylon in 586 BCE. Now when Cyrus, the Persian conqueror, gave an edict for them to return to Jerusalem, the pagan peoples were amazed at what the Lord did for Israel. The psalmist also sees the hand of the Lord in their return.