You can think of “taking up your cross” as a way of dealing with the daily stresses and burdens of life, but in the scriptural sense it means more than keeping your patience. It’s really about being willing to make sacrifices to follow Jesus.

A question hangs over the world for 20 centuries, dividing Jews and Christians in an incontrovertible way. Who is Jesus? Is he the messiah promised in sacred texts of the past or not? If he is, how are we to understand him? What does his messiahship involve? What difference does it make if we accept it or not?

Identity is a funny thing. When it comes right down to it, so much of who we are depends on who others say we are: parent, sibling, loved one, friend. The essence of each of these relationships is not determined by genetics or even long-time association: It is determined by mutual agreement.

Brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge our sins, and so prepare ourselves to celebrate the sacred mysteries.

A number of women followed and even supported Jesus and have to be counted among those when the phrase “the disciples” is used. They were there for his life, death, and resurrection and were charter members of the church when it was born of the Spirit.

Identity is the crucial issue of our time. We cannot inherit it; we have to make it. In that sense we do indeed construct our reality. But as the African maxim says, “I am because we are.” No personal sense of identity is formed on one’s own.

Do not the angels differ from us in this respect, that they do not want so many things as we do? Therefore the less we need, the more we are on our way to them. —Saint John Chrysostom