In 2007, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice established the International Women of Courage Award. It is presented to women who show exceptional courage, even at great risk to their own lives. Each year, U.S. embassies around the world put forward candidates for this award from their country of service. This year, on March 29, First Lady Melania Trump presented the awards. Among the recipients from countries as diverse as Colombia, Papua New Guinea and Botswana was Sister Carolin Tahhan Fachakh, a member of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians.

Thank you for accepting God’s call. Thanks to all of you who have left family and country to serve God’s people on these shores. Jesus does not call us servants. He calls us friends (cf Jn 15:14). Thanks for being such trusted, loyal friends of the Lord himself.

Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome the wife of Zebedee rise early. Their grief at Jesus’ death makes them restless. Bearing spices, they come to complete the burial rites of the one whom they love. Far from their thoughts are Jesus’ own words that he would suffer, die and, on the third day, rise again. For them, as for every pious Jew, the resurrection would happen on the last day when all the bodies of the dead would be raised from their tombs. Not before!

In 1975, Raymond Moody published the bestseller Life After Life. In it, he coined the term “near-death experience” to label what some individuals said had happened to them after they were clinically dead. Moody’s pioneer work sparked a great interest in the reality of these experiences. Thus, in 1981, the International Association for Near-Death Studies was established. This international organization encourages scientific research on the physical, psychological, and religious nature of these reported experiences.