I’m already looking forward to Easter, so late in April this year. But now is the time to focus on the Passion of Jesus Christ. Do I believe Jesus’ cause, loving neighbors and enemies, is more important than anything else? No one is spared suffering, so we offer to God our little pinpricks—those hourly inconveniences, disturbances, distractions. That’s the easy (but perhaps neglected) part. We follow a Crucified Savior. If we want to keep company with Jesus, we must follow the same path, taking up our crosses—the big ones. I can easily claim, “Everyone has crosses to bear,” but every human being deals with those daily pinpricks whether they follow Jesus or not. Gerhard Lohfink writes, in All My Springs Are in You: “The cross, in contrast, is the necessary consequence of a decision for Jesus’ cause. It is the compulsory consequence of choosing the truth, because truth is unpopular. Thus the cross is freely chosen, freely taken on one’s shoulders, and we do not carry our cross simply by patiently accepting life’s hard blows or the little annoyances of daily life…but only when we follow Jesus.”
“To live is to be slowly born.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Sunflower Seeds
Celebrating Everyday Spirituality
One Response
There is no benefit in comparing crosses. What may look like a little cross for one person may be a heavy one for another. It’s your pain, it’s your cross. Don’t diminish or excuse your pain, thinking it’s nothing compared to others. It’s your pain. It’s your cross to carry at this moment.