Triduum 2026

As we enter into this holy Triduum, let our love be intentional. What will we hear?

“I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

“As the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love.” John 15:9

“This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.” John 15:12

“This I command you: love one another.” John 15:17

“I in them and you in me, that they may be brought to perfection as one, that the world may know that you sent me, and that you loved them even as you loved me.” John 17:23

“I made known to them your name and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” John 17:26

This is everything. This is the end of all God’s creative acts, all His acts of mercy, the entire plan of salvation, the plan from the beginning (“Then God said: Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Gen 1:26, “God is love” I John 4:8), that we love God and one another with His own love. Everything in all of history, everything in the Church is ordered to this end.

This love is the light that blinds Satan, that the darkness cannot overcome (John 1:5), that springs from the very life of Jesus Himself in us, the Flame of Love (John 1:4), the love that fills our Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Heart full of grace and bursts out toward us, the love that puts out the fire of hatred. When we live in this love, God’s own love (Rom 5:5), Satan cannot lead us into sin; he is blind and powerless.

This is how we must be known. Did you notice that there is no call to consecration in the Diary – not to Saint Joseph, not to Mary, not to the Sacred Heart (though there is one reference to Elizabeth’s home already being consecrated to the Sacred Heart). There is no novena. There is no chaplet. We can do all these things as good Catholics but they are not the Flame of Love. We must be known as the people who love as Jesus loves with our Blessed Mother’s help (the effect of grace of the Flame of Love); the people who are united completely to Jesus (the Unity Prayer) – the people whose inmost being feels in unison with Jesus – who feel as He feels even toward those who have hurt us the most – the people whose eyes have completely united with Jesus’ eyes so that we see others as He sees them – even those who have hurt us the most. We must be the people whose hearts beat in union with Jesus’ heart so that we participate in His divinity and can only bless – even blessing those who have hurt us the most. We must be a people who walk continuously with Jesus in His life of sacrificial love – who are continually walking to Calvary even for those who have hurt us the most. This is what it means to live the Flame of Love; this is how we should be known; this is the love that brings peace.

As He has died so we may live, let us now die to our selves that He may live within us and raise us to new life – Jesus, the Flame of Love of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. A most blessed Easter to you all!