Go to the "Holidays to Holy Days" section to discover 10 great ways to celebrate mother's day.

On this Divine Mercy Sunday we come to the last set two set of words that Jesus says from the Cross. Before we go to these last two sayings let us look at another quote from Fulton Sheen: ?It is this St. Paul means when he says that we should fill up those things that are wanting to the sufferings of Christ. This does not mean our Lord on the Cross did not suffer all He could. It means rather that the physical, historical Christ suffered all He could in His own human nature, but that the Mystical Christ, which is Christ and us, has not suffered to our fullness. All the other good thieves in the history of the world have not yet admitted their wrong and pleaded for remembrances. Our Lord is now in heaven. He therefore can suffer no more in His human nature but He can suffer more in our human natures.?

A happy and blessed Easter to everyone, I pray that everyone has had a blessed Holy Week. My spiritual ponderings will continue to focus on the last seven words of Christ on the Cross. Another quick quote from Fulton Sheen to get us started: ?Men on dying either proclaim their own innocence, or condemn the judge who sentence them to death, or else ask pardon for sins. But Perfect Innocence asked no pardon; as Mediator between God and man He extended pardon.?

For the month of April we are exploring the Seven Last Words of Christ upon the Cross. As we reflect upon Jesus? word we discover one of God?s most elegant sermons on the meaning of love. Fulton Sheen puts it this way: ?There is no escaping the Cross no even by denying it as the Pharisees did; not even by selling Christ as Judas did; not even by crucifying Him as the executioners did. We all see it either to embrace it in salvation, or to fly from it into misery.?

As we enter the month of April, we discover ourselves in the middle of Lent and moving quickly toward Holy Week and Easter. This month of April is guaranteed to be a time of intense spiritual growth if we take the time to simply focus on what God wants to say to us through the liturgies we celebrate. Sometimes, it can be helpful for us to look at the mysteries we celebrate from another perspective and thus I would like to dedicate this month’s Spiritual Ponderings on a little known Catholic devotion. This devotion focuses on paying special attention to the Last Seven Words of Christ as He hung upon the Cross. In his book the Life of Christ, Archbishop Fulton Sheen beautifully described Jesus being nailed to the Cross as a preacher ascending the pulpit in order to preach to the world: “In this sublime hour He called all His children to the pulpit of the Cross, and every word He said to them was set down for the purpose of an eternal publication and an undying consolation. There was never a preacher like the dying Christ; there was never a congregation like that which gathered about the pulpit of the Cross.”