Hey, everybody. This is Father John Ricardo with Acts 29. And in the middle of all the craziness

and the uncertainty that's going on right now, it seems from our perspective as a team that it's

worth using these days to reflect in a more deliberate way on the scriptures every day, which

for many of us now is the only spiritual food that we're receiving. And so we're going to do a special podcast series simply entitled, Be Not Afraid, God's Word in

Uncertain Times. And we'll try to post something every day, usually reflecting on the

scriptures, so that we can listen in on what God is trying to say to us in these days.

On this final day, the month of March, in a season of length that none of us are ever going to

forget, as we draw closer to Holy Week, increasingly each and every morning, a question

just keeps coming to my mind that I feel like the Lord is asking me to personally

ponder and reflect on. And the question is simply this. What was Jesus doing on the cross?

Now that's supposed to sound a bit like an odd question, perhaps even jarring. I mean, it doesn't look

like he's doing anything after all, right? It looks like it's all being done to him. Ah, but it's not.

This is, as the great Catholic writer, Frank Sheed once said, the most active moment of Jesus's priesthood.

Remember Jesus' words in the Gospel of John,

no one takes my life from me. I have the power to lay it down, he says,

and I have the power to take it up again.

And so as we get ever and ever closer now to Holy Week, the great week, I just thought I didn't offer everybody in encouragement to approach this upcoming Holy Week with a very particular focus in mind.

Just pray, Jesus, help me to see you in a new way.

In the gospel today, Jesus says,

When I am lifted up, then you will know that I am.

When he says those words, I am,

he's using an expression which all of his listeners knew was a way of God describing himself.

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