The church has a single focus today—the death of Christ—but her Christ still lives, still suffers in her members and still feeds her with his flesh. We pause in time. Christ does not.

St. Thomas arrives at the very center of what happened at the Last Supper, of what would happen the next day on the cross and of what happens at every subsequent Eucharist. With his own hands, Christ gives himself to us.

Our senses will be deceived by the appearance of bread and wine, which is why St. Thomas Aquinas insists that we trust only one of our senses, our hearing. On Easter, we solemnly proclaim and hear, silently sounding within our hearts, the saving news of the Gospel.

Before the soldiers arrive, before the physical attacks, in the silence of the night, the soul of Christ struggles in agony.

Unless we remove all of the people, we will never produce a sinless church, one that pursues the good without also perpetrating some evil.

We are all about individual rights, personal narratives and the freedom to choose. So was the Prodigal Son, until the food ran out.

The question of trust, of giving ourselves to something outside ourselves, is quite fundamental. It goes to the nature of who we are as human beings. One might pose the question this way: Are we clams or clovers?

Intimacy can only be shared between those who love. It cannot be summarized. Intimacy lives in silence.

If you picture a dark-winged figure tempting Jesus in the desert, you reduce the real power of evil. Why? Because you have removed the devil’s greatest advantage: the darkness of confusion.

Life does not have to be this way. You don’t have to be this way. You can begin again. All that you require has been here all along. You need only return to the mystery of your own baptism.