You are listening to the St. Jose Maria Institute podcast.

Please enjoy today's meditation.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me.

I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer

fruitful. My immaculate mother, St. Joseph, my father and Lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

Some years ago I was showing a chapel to a family that wanted to know more about the

Catholic faith.

And I explained to them first and foremost the most important thing in any chapel, which

is your real presence in the Eucharist. But when I was giving them a tour, the girl of that family kind of a look at the side chapel

in that church in which there was a crucifixion, and a sin of the crucifixion, our Lord,

you my Lord, nailed to the cross and dead.

And again, they were new to the whole thing.

So she asked me bluntly and directly, with shock, who did this?

And my first reaction was to talk about the author, the artist that made that image, right?

But I thought, no, she's not asking about this, the author.

She was asking me about who did such an atrocity.

And it's a very difficult question and a very difficult answer.

It takes the whole history of redemption to answer to that question.

And that same week, it was during the Holy Week, I was celebrating mass in a church.

And during communion, the people there were singing this famous song that I think the slaves would

sing when they were in the fields many years ago in the U.S.

One of those Christian, very Christian songs about the passion of our Lord.

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