At National Catholic Register Today

We're getting to the end of the series on the Rosary, so naturally, we'd save the Crucifixion for during Lent.   Here's today's piece, "Sooner or Later, We All End Up at the Foot of the Cross."

Next week my son has a retreat in preparation for Confirmation, and I have two mysteries left to do to finish this project, The Ressurection and the Descent of the Holy Spirit.  My plan is to print up all of them for him as a Confirmation present, and add a rosary to it.  It's been a fun project in addition to being a challenging one.  Now I have to figure out what I'll write about next. 

Who is the Crucifixion For?

As a child, I believed, and even as an adult, I have said in jest, "The fireworks on the 4th of July?  They're for me."  Why?  Because as a child, I thought them wonderful and why wouldn't we do something wonderful for my birthday?  Why wouldn't my birthday go beyond one day?  As an adult, it's fun because it means I always know, my family will have off when it's time to celebrate.  

However, the joke is a joke because it's not true. 

The Crucifixion however, it is for me.  It is true.  It was always for me, and I always needed this, just to have a shot at something better beyond this life.  The same is true for each of us. The Crucifixion is a gift, an outrageous gift of over the top love from God to each of us, a sign, symbol and reality of the lengths to which, God will go to win us back. 

There are many excellent reflections and exercises one can use on this Good Friday to honor that gift.  The easiest one I know, is to hold a crucifix in your hands.

Consider His feet.  His feet which the woman washed with her tears, dried with her hair and anointed with perfume, are now pierced all the way through with a nail which someone physically drove into him. and someone else held down so it could be done. 

Next, consider his hands, which he used to make clay to place on a blind man's eyes, and to break the loaves and fishes, which he used to touch a man's ears and say, "Be opened."  They are pinned to a cross.  I don't know about you, but when I consider the nails, I tend to hold my hands, to pull back, because the idea of it is almost too much. 

At the idea of an idea being too much, I consider the crown of thorns, which pierces all over, which he cannot remove, which digs into his skull.  There are a thousand splinters, an untold number of lashes, and all the bruises from the walk and the falls with the cross. These are just the physical agonies we inflicted.

Now we add the cowardice, the grief he felt from being alone, from knowing those He did this for (us, or if I'm doing this examination alone, me), would shout "Crucify him!" The ones he did this for, would play clever, asking, "What is truth?"  The ones he did this for, would say they did not know him, would run away, would betray him, would scatter, and at best, they would watch. 

It was at this point, I hit the snag of "why did Mary, Mother of God say nothing?" 

However, Mary knew her heart would be pierced.  She knew this was the means of salvation. She'd heard his teaching. She'd heard his prediction of having to suffer and die, of having to take up the cross.  She must have pondered it in her heart, and resolved to do God's will.  Suffering her son to die, this must have been the hardest act of obedience of her life, to watch the spectacle, to not go and gather the apostles, yell at them and get them to go back and at least witness with Jesus, to stay with Him, and watch him surrender his spirit.  I cannot imagine a harder task for anyone.  Her prayer must have been a constant fiat at this point, "Let it be done according to Your will." just to hold to being a person without sin.

As I pondered her at the foot of the cross more, when you're faced with the total gift of self offered on the Cross by God for each and all of us, all you ultimately can feel, is silent awe.  So I'm guessing there was some of that in Mary's heart as well, because she would have held all those who fled, all those who shouted, all those who begged for Barabbas and all those who crucified Him, in her heart as well.  "Love God with all your heart, soul and body, and your neighbor as yourself."  Mary had to somehow, be loving those around her as she loved her Son to endure seeing Him on the cross and taking Him down. 

Who is the crucifixion for? It's for each of us, because we've been every role in this drama of the Easter story except for two, and those are the two we are to emulate.  We've been weak like Peter, we've sold out like Judas, we've been envious like the Pharisees, we've been fired up and eager like the crowd, equivocating like Pilate, desirous of having proof, of being able to command God, like Herod, cruel like those who scourged Him, violent like those who nailed him, and scared like the apostles who ran off in every direction.  The more we dig, the more we can find to prove we need God to show us, He will love us even through this, even in spite of this.  "Father forgive them, they know not what they do."  His words of forgiveness even from a cross, to each of us, for the reasons we put Him there.

Have a Great Good Friday, knowing He held onto the nails, not the hurt, and asking each of us in our lives, in our sufferings great and small, to do the same and repeat the words of Mary, "Let it be done to me, according to Your Will," and of Jesus, "Father forgive them, they know not what they do."

Limping into Easter

This is the high season for Catholics, especially those church going rosary saying apologetics reading catholic blog groupies like me.  

Except I am completely spent.  Emotionally, spiritually, personally, I am tired.

I have had a crummy Lent.  The irony stings. I wrote a column on Lent. I've tried adding things and taking away and I’ve forgotten and started again and forgotten and started again and deliberately ignored my resolutions and confessed and confessed and failed yet again. .

Trying to right the ship, I tried to lead a family rosary and we did it, if you don’t count the silent cold war between one child who refused to come in, and another who refused to come up from the basement after they’d screamed at each other.   I felt defeated.  How can I raise these people to be holy when I am not?  How can I be responsible for these souls when I am flunking with my own?

It occurred to me that I don’t envy the Pope trying to be responsible for the souls of the whole Church, trying to lead all of us to the heart of Christ.   We are an unruly lot of surliness...like my children on occasion.
Yet all of it can turn in an instant, from the clamor of a fight to the grace of unexpected extraordinary generosity.  We keep trying and sometimes, we can approximate the love we are called to give.

We have to lay hold of, the heart of Christ, and it is freely offered at every mass in the Eucharist.  That is the great miracle of His love, that is Heart is ours for the taking, it is offered like a lover, for He is love.   Take and eat.  Be at peace. Be not afraid.  Christ will fix everything we’ve broken if we let him.

We needed the Crucifixion, each of us needed Our God to suffer that that much …just for us because we are so messed up.  We are so angry. We are so injured, we hold onto our wounds fearful of the Divine Physician’s healing touch.  We want to hold onto our pain in our pride, and let it define us.  We cannot give a perfect Lent, we cannot save ourselves.  It is only in surrendering to God’s grace that we allow his Heart which as always beat for us, to enter.  

Easter happened.  Easter is happening.  This is the great reality, that a great or crummy Lent, Christ accepts all our offerings, the crumpled resolutions that got forgotten and abandoned and the ones well kept, it is the hearts He desires.   So to all who come to crowd the Easter mass, offer your heart, He will give you His, and all the weariness and wounds of this world will be washed away.  He will heal all of our lameness, world and self inflicted.

Have a blessed Easter.

Today

Today a friend lost her daughter to cancer.

My friend has as a gift in her parenting, the ability to be fully present to her children in all moments. That sort of focus and concentration comes and goes for me and often requires more discipline of will from my heart than I want to give. If a parent can approach the pending death of a child in a holy manner, my friend did. She was funny and frustrated and fought all the way and still, ultimately, she had to surrender so much along the way about what her daughter would hold in her future, and finally, she had to offer her daughter up at the foot of the cross and so she did.

There is a shell I sometimes pour over myself on what must be a daily basis to be sure I won't be cracked open and made to feel too much, but suffering shatters that quickly. So does love. So does grace.

I forget this all the time. Today things were not easy but I kept my tongue I hope more because I was caught up short, reminded that today is precious. My solace is that even though I know I will in some cases fail and fail and fail again, I must follow the example of my friend. I have to trust that when God keeps hammering at me, it is to shatter the walls I put up.

So when my four year old daughter came down in her best Christmas dress to eat waffles with butter and syrup, in memory of her daughter and in imitation of my friend,(I winced inside) but let it go. It wasn't easy but in retrospect, it should have been.

It was a long day filled with both the profound and the mundane mixed together in the same moments.

When the bathroom had an unexplained puddle and the kids played spagetti wigs with their lunch while I was fixing mine, requiring yet another shower, it was hard not to feel frustrated and laugh at the same time. There was at least three servings of angle hair on the floor and that's just murderously hard to pick up even with a 12.5 gallon 4.5 horsepower shop vac.

But today there were also momentary victories, like doing yoga with a toddler attached to the ankle. She spent the work out giggling as I tried to lift my leg.

My seven, five, four and two year old decided to begin water color painting at 5:30 in the afternoon. There is a stack of pictures next to the pan where I burnt dinner. Now I see I should have joined in the fun, and then the burnt rice and chicken at least wouldn't have been an accident.

I didn't get to read, to finish the laundry and I still don't feel motivated to tackle the burnt pots from dinner. But a friend has surrendered her child to forever and so it seems terribly petty to be irritated at anything and yet it happens.

Trusting God, shutting one's eyes to the world so one can take care of souls is hard. I'm not sure I could get out on the ocean, but I know if we believe, really believe, then we are called to run towards the star at the stable, run towards the Christ on the water, run towards the Crucified Jesus on Calvary and run to the tomb to discover Him ressurected.

So hug your family. Pray for your friends. Forgive yourself for your foibles with all the little things that pile up daily and allow yourself be cracked open a bit more. Most importantly, thank God for all the gifts that are gratis today.