Love of the Cross

 

This is the start of Holy Week, and so it is fitting that many of my meditative readings should focus on Jesus’ willing acceptance of His cross, and how we should also willingly accept ours.  He gave me a great one this week, and I find these readings are a support to help me bear it.

Love of the Cross – from Meditation 132 in Divine Intimacy:

Our union with God cannot be accomplished except through suffering…. We especially need passive suffering. Other words, the Lord Himself must make us suffer, not only in our body (like giving up coffee for Lent) , but also in our soul, because we are so covered with rust, so full of miseries that our total purification is not possible unless God Himself intervenes directly.  To plunge us into passive suffering is, therefore, one of His greatest works of mercy, a proof of His exceeding love. … He finds so few souls disposed to accept the hard task of purification.  Therefore, He stops purifying them, and they condemn themselves to mediocrity and advance no farther.  It is impossible to become united to God without these spiritual sufferings, without bearing this “burden” of God.  Suffering and interior desolation alone enlarge the powers of the soul and make it capable of embracing God Himself.

“O souls that seek to walk in security and comfort in spiritual things!  If you did but know how necessary it is to suffer and endure in order to reach this security!” (St. John of the Cross).  It is not a question of attaining perfection in order to enjoy it --- for the perfect soul never thinks of self --- but that the soul may be wholly dedicated to the glory of God.

Our sanctification, then, is proportionate to our experience of the Passion of Christ.  Sufferings are, even in this sense, a proof of God’s love for us.  If we understood all this, how we should love the Cross!

 

March 28 --- from Minute Meditations for Each Day

            Therefore I bear with all of this for the sake of those whom God has chosen. 2Tm 2:10

Reflection:  Every suffering is a task that God’s eternal sets before human beings.  When we patiently endure our troubles, our own soul is enriched and becomes more mature.  In addition, we obtain blessings for the souls of others.  I must remember this in the midst of my worries and my sufferings.  Then I will not grow weary of carrying my cross or of doing good.

Prayer:  Father, bless me and through me let all who draw near me also be blessed.

 

March 28 – from This is the Day the Lord Has Made

When the disciples gather for the meal on Holy Thursday, Jesus is aware that it is the last time He will be together with them.  For this reason, everything He says and does has a special significance.  Every movement is filled with meaning.  Jesus leaves His legacy.

He kneels before his friends and washes their feet, a service normally carried out by a house slave.  John, who recounts this episode, emphasizes two things.  First, the devil has already given Judas the idea to betray Jesus.  Second, Jesus is wholly conscious that the Father has handed Him everything, and that He has come from God and is now returning to Him.  At this hour, Jesus knows He is God.  What happens is that God kneels before His creation and serves it.

Before this mystery it is both comical and ridiculous to observe our propensity for wanting to dominate others, and maintain our rights and dignity.  If we want to be like God there is only one way:  to bend low and serve.

 

Humility, penance, love, and forgiveness, these underline Jesus’ actions this week.  This week especially reminds us that those are also some of the most important things we can do with our lives.  I encourage you to take each of those four words and try this week to do one deliberate (humble, penitential, loving and forgiving) action, to act in one difficult way, choosing to do the hardest things we can think to do, for the Lord.  He, God, chose to do many of those things this week for us.

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And on a lighter note, my friend Fr. Benedict Groeshel wrote this in his Palm Sunday reflections:

This day commemorates the only real celebration of Jesus of Nazareth as King and Messiah during His earthly life…. Perhaps the procession into Jerusalem was the clearest possible acknowledgement of His messiahship since the homage paid Him by the wise men and the shepherds at His Nativity (Wow!  I never thought of that!).

Religious practice in the English-speaking world has become very casual, to use a kindly term. …. There is no enthusiasm, joy, or engagement of the person.  It seems to many that attending church is like getting on a bus.  We should work to change this slipshod approach.  We should dress as if we re going to worship God, and not to the beach.  We should sing and respond to the prayers, and personally we should pray.  When the liturgy is over, then we should joyfully greet our fellow Christians.  If all that seems strange and unreal, then go and pray with the poor.  Like the crowd that welcomed Jesus, they will show you what to do.

Amen!

Explaining Easter

I listened to Fr. John Riccardo’s latest podcast, number 118, at http://Actsxxix.org,  In it, he is extremely excited about THIS Easter and how we, especially parents, might celebrate, might understand and proclaim, the deep truth of what happened on Easter Sunday.  It’s only twenty minutes long, and I encourage you to take the time to listen to, and catch, Fr. John’s excitement.  Perhaps your children might also.

I’ve used this Lent to listen to all of these podcasts at Acts XXIX.  If you are still looking for some Lenten reflections, I found these podcasts to be most inspiring:  1,15,32,40,41,53,63,67,86,90,93,100 (Jesus in the storm --- like today), 109, 110 (Hope), 111, and 118.

In distress you called, and I rescued you.   PS 81:7

 

 

Lent is Time for Forgiveness

 

I enjoy reading Fr. Benedict Groeschel’s daily Lenten meditations in his book The King, Crucified and Risen.  Here are some excerpts from this week.

He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.
                                                               Lk 11:23

“Most of the time in life, when we support someone or go along with someone, we do so with qualifications, and we ought not to.  No one is perfect.  Even if we love people very dearly --- a parent, a spouse, or a child --- we will do them no good if we can’t correct them or at least see when they are wrong. 

But all disagreements and corrections cease when you read the words of Jesus and realize that you are not living up to His expectations of you.  Then you are scattering.  Often, we don’t see this.  What should we do when we realize we have scattered?  The simple answer is to admit we failed and pick up where we are and do better.

Get accustomed this Lent to facing up to old mistakes.  Maybe we did not do wrong, but we certainly could have done a lot better.  This realization may make us depressed, but get beyond your hurt feelings and disappointments. It’s a challenge.  The closer we get to God, the more His grace opens our hearts.  Then we realize that sometimes we gather with Him and sometimes we scatter.  But He is always there to help us if we let Him.  Often, He is most active when He seems far away.

Prayer

Lord Jesus, help me to gather with You.  I know that
I can be very stupid and scatter instead.  Help me to
be Your more fervent disciple and to give some of Your
fire to those whom I love.  Amen.”

 

Lent is a time for forgiveness.  Sometimes it is ourself we need to forgive.  None of us is perfect.  During this Lenten period, we need to read and meditate on what Jesus did as His earthly life neared its end.  He forgave.  He loved.  He prayed for even His enemies.  And on Easter morn, He started a new life.  In the Catholic sacrament of confession, we not only confess our sins and ask forgiveness, but we resolve to change our life going forward, our Easter if you will.

I’ve read the country will someday emerge from this corona virus pandemic a different country; we will be a different people, but who we will be has not yet cast in stone.  We have a freedom to choose, but what will we choose?  Will we be like a risen Christ, focused on ending sin and gaining eternal life?

I believe the world, this country, we, will be in a better place if we use this Lenten time as Jesus did, to forgive, to love, to pray.  He could have commanded the world and its people to be as He wanted THEM to be --- He is God --- but instead He showed US how to be.  And in showing us this glorious future compared to where we are today in our Passion, we may have forgotten His promise to always be with us; He gave us hope.

I read that the word “religion” did not come into existence until the 1500’s.  Until then, what we now call religion was seen as a description of how you lived your life.  That’s why when the apostles went out preaching, the first followers of Jesus were called Jesus-Jews.  The Jewish way of living said that a Messiah was coming, and those who believed He had come were still expected to live as Jews.  It’s what you did, how you lived.  Only later, in Antioch, did they begin to be called Christians, for many noted that they no longer lived like Jews --- following the Torah, Jewish feast days, Jewish ways of eating and acting.  These “Christians” were living differently.  One of the commonly said things to describe them was “see how they love! --- even their enemies” --- and they don’t even fear death; they have hope. ( I wonder if the word “religion” was later invented to define a people who were supposed to be living a certain way, but obviously they weren’t, so a new word was needed.  “Religion” is a generic word that doesn’t define a way of living with hope, nor an emotion.) 

Jesus showed us how to live a good life, a life defined by love.  It’s time to pray, to forgive, and to love this Lent, not as we wish things to be, but as He showed us --- and to live that life and hope in His promises.  This Lent I think we need to ask ourselves: “Am I living a Christian way of life?”  And then look at how Jesus and His followers lived, and then begin to truly follow Jesus.  And pray that our lives may ultimately become as new as His now is, and the world will be changed.

… and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us ….