“Suffering links me to other people. Early on, when I was in the seminary, I lost my brother in Viet Nam. When he was killed in Viet Nam, that was a real moment of total death that was really the Passion of Christ. Yet, I saw some new life come of that, and that was the beginning of discovering for the first time what the mystery of the Passion was really all about. How out of death comes new life, and how, the suffering that I experience in my own life, links me to other people who are suffering as well. That’s the way it’s been, the mystery of the Passion, being able to talk to people who are in moments of suffering and not feeling like I am on the outside but standing very close to them, understanding what their experience is like.

So, the charism is something that inundates my preaching. It’s almost impossible for me to preach without somehow touching on the mystery of the Passion—the mystery of redemptive suffering and new life that comes from that.”

Fr. Patrick Brennan, CP, 5.14.08


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