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.

- - - - - - - - - -

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!