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Holy Fear and the Shadow of the Cross

Today, the Church takes us under the shadow of Calvary to behold our salvation and to approach this sacred place requires a reverence and awe that are not of this world. The Man of Sorrows gives Himself for our salvation, lays down His life that we might live. We come here today because of the burden of guilt that we have carried for far too long, the reality of death that we cannot avoid, and the desire to be understood and loved, to be connected to Someone who can relieve the sense of alienation that we suffer, to the only One who can fulfill at last the desires of our hearts. We dare to call out to Him “remember me” because of the heart-piercing gifts by which the Holy Spirit moves our hearts.

Saint Hildegard von Bingen describes this supernatural grace that she discovered when she entered into this shadow of God’s immensity. Fascinated and astounded, she has discovered awe in the presence of a reality greater and more real than is she. Tested, challenged, and tried, this gift from above makes her dare to approach nonetheless, and to stand humble, attentive, and ready to act. The tedium that can sometimes overcome a soul in prayer has no power over her now. Completely alert, this profound reverence prevents her from losing her focus, gives her the courage to stand firm, to behold, to listen, to adore. She personifies this astonishing super human gift, describing a mysterious figure covered with eyes, a creature who never loses sight of the immensity of Divine Justice, a being of merciful contemplation whom she identifies as “the Fear of the Lord.”

We, frail though we are, are all called to stand before the immensity of God’s justice and truth just like Saint Hildegard. The gift of fear of the Lord remains meaningless if we do not ponder the great mystery of human weakness and divine power, the abyss between actual human achievement and the demands of divine justice, and this for even the most pious and holy among us. What is this mountain, this immensity of Divine Justice, but the very mountain on which the Father glorified His Son, the mountain on which stands that Cross around which the whole world, each one’s life and all of history turns?

Up against the price that He paid for us and the greatness of the salvation He won for us, no one who is unwilling to bend the knee and bow the head should ever dare approach this King of Glory. Christ crucified knows our presumption and pride, our capacity for self-delusion, our hypocrisy, all the ways we overestimate ourselves, and even more, the ways we hate and torment ourselves.  These spiritual diseases are not acceptable to Him but for love of us, each one, He accepted their consequences unto death on the Cross. So He offered His last wordless cry, the prayer that still echoes between heaven and earth, a cry that death could not silence, that hell could not contain, this prayer from a heart that our cowardice and lust for power rent open.  This cry of love is the last word concerning all things human, the fullness of everything the Father has yearned for us to know, the voice that is heard the immensity of Divine glory. We dare not listen without the reverence this supreme act is owed.

If we are to stand before the mystery of the Suffering Servant who, raised on the Cross, revealed the unity of divine justice and mercy at the price of His own blood, then we need the Holy Spirit to protect us from our own cowardice and mediocrity. If we ask with humility, He gives us the same hope-filled fear that He breathed into the good thief and that He sent to stand with Saint Hildegard. If we will persevere in Calvary’s shadow, the Holy Spirit will move us with humble awe and wonder to renounce all the evil and mistaken judgements we have made about God, ourselves and neighbors.

When we tremble before the love, justice and mercy revealed on the Cross, holy fear makes us know that our Crucified God does not intend his admonishments to crush us but to prepare us, to make us humble and vulnerable enough to carry out His work in the world.  Holy fear will prevent us from losing heart. Today, Saint Hildegard’s vision of Divine Justice and Holy Fear gives us the courage to stand before the righteousness of God, to beg “remember me”, to confess his sovereignty, to bow our heads and to kiss his feet. 

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Making Space for God in the Face of Grave Evil

How do we pray in the face of grave evil and personal disaster?  Often grave evil has a stifling affect on prayer.  One feels overwhelmed and helpless. In this despondency, the mind struggles to search for God’s presence, if it struggles at all.  In the face of unexpected disaster, the crushing burden of difficult questions torments the soul.  Yet, the world in which we live and in which we pray has always been riddled with the mystery of grave and overwhelming evil.  How do we begin to pray when God’s love seems so absent and the reason for our hope so difficult to affirm?

Sometimes it feels impossible to pray and prayer is reduced to its most essential and simple movement – the cry of the heart for mercy.  On this point, Pope Emeritus Benedict’s Spe Salvi refers to Cardinal Nguyen van Thuan’s experiences during his long internment in Vietnam (see #34).  Sometimes, there was nothing the Cardinal could offer from his heart and all he could do was repeats passages from Scripture or prayers he memorized.

I have also spoken to those close to death who complain about the same kind of difficulty in prayer.  They want to want to be able to pray – but there are no words, no thoughts, no feelings, nothing to intuit, nothing to imagine, nothing.  In such moments, God seems so absent and in effort to pray, if effort can be made at all, seems so wasted.  So they repeat simple short phrases they have memorized, “now and at the hour of our death” or else “our hope does not disappoint” or even “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus…”  

In such cases, all that is left to the soul seems to be a sort of last vestige of prayer, a feeble desire to raise one’s heart to God, a desire hidden in the overwhelming pain that, in this moment and under these circumstances, cannot realize fulfillment and yet chooses to hope anyway.  It is an effort to pray or to desire to pray baptized in heartbreak and dismay — and in this annihilation, we have already entered deep into the infallible prayer of Christ Crucified.

Who is not reduced to this kind of prayer when the mystery evil crushes the innocent and vulnerable?  When we learn about a friend’s daughter paralyzed after a fatal accident, when we learn about explosives killing people at a foot race, or when we learn about the horrific slaughter of babies who having survived callous attempts to abort them were subjected in the most inhumane brutality, it is difficult to pray – the heart is numb, but not our hope.  When the simple words of the Our Father, a Hail Mary, or even the whispered name of Jesus is all that can be offered — this is what the Lord needs us to offer and this with what love we can muster: for even in the poverty of our prayer, the most frail effort to pray makes space in the world for God to act.  So we find the courage to pray.  The power of God is at work in so many hidden ways that, even when our conversation with the Him is reduced to nothing else than the most humble cry of the heart, the Lord unleashes anew that flood of hope that helps the world begin to see the triumph of good over evil even in face of heart-breaking circumstances.

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The Blood of the Lamb and the Sign of the Cross

For Christians, the ancient rites of Passover and the Passion of Christ are deeply connected.   To deliver the People of God from slavery in Egypt, God sent an angel of death, a great power that stole from families the lives of those they deemed most precious.   To protect His own People from this destroying angel, He commanded the Hebrews to gather as families, slaughter a lamb and to sprinkle the blood of this lamb on the doorposts of their homes.  Seeing the blood, the angel of destruction passed over the homes of those who belonged to the Lord.  In the tradition of Christian prayer, this sprinkled blood foreshadows the power of the Blood of Christ signified by the Sign of the Cross.  So much did the early Christians connect their faith in the Blood of Christ with that of the saving events of the Passover, St. Paul explains, “Our Paschal Lamb, Christ has been Sacrificed” 1 Cor. 5:7.

Ecce Homo
By St. Albert Chmielowski of Krakow

The Gospels explicitly connect the sacred rites of the Last Supper of the Lord with the Passover celebration.  There are also other theological contexts connecting the sacrifice of the lamb with the Cross of Christ. (See Mark 15:25-37.)  In the Gospel of John, according to St. Augustine in Tractate 117, Jesus dies on the Day of Preparation for the Passover, the day on which lambs were slaughtered for the celebration of passover (See John 19:14).  The diversity of these Scriptural traditions is symphonic, speaking to the inexhaustible horizons of the Lord’s saving work, a mystery so vast and beautiful the only proper response is thanksgiving (eucharist).

Whenever we prayerfully reflect on the beautiful connections of our salvation prefigured in Exodus and fulfilled in Christ, our hearts are made vulnerable to the vision of the early Christians.  Their vision was filled with wonder over the blood of the sacrificial lamb and what it revealed about the Mystery of the Cross.   They marveled over how the blood that was shed in ancients rites foreshadowed the Blood of Christ they received by faith and they rooted their worship in this contemplation.

“The Passion of the Christ was prefigured by the Jews when they received the command to mark the doors of their houses with blood.  It is by the sign of His Passion and Cross that you must be marked today on the forehead, as on a door, and that all Christians are marked.”  St. Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, as cited by Jean Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy, Ann Arbor: Servant Books (1979), 167.

St. Augustine is connecting the ancient rite of sprinkling the blood of the lamb, a saving sign for the Hebrews enslaved in Egypt, with the cross that is given in the baptismal rites, a saving sign for those seeking freedom from sin.  Before baptism, the Church entrusts the Sign of the Cross to the chosen catechumen by tracing a cross on the forehead with the Oil of Catechumens.   This ancient Christian rite is continued in our Catholic practice today.   Those who receive the Sign of the Cross (sphargis)  through this anointing are safe from demonic attack in a manner similar to the way ancient Hebrew families were saved from the angel of death.   The blood of God, the life of God, is more powerful than evil.

“There is no other way to escape the destroying angel than by the blood of God, Who by love has poured out His blood for us.  And by this blood, we receive the Holy Spirit.  Indeed the Spirit and the blood are related in such a way that by the blood which is connatural to us, we receive the Spirit which is not con natural, and the gate of death is closed to our souls.  Such is the sphragis of the blood.”  Paschal Homilies of Pseudo-Chrysostom as cited by Jean Danielou, The Bible and the Liturgy, Ann Arbor: Servant Books (1979), 166. 

Making the Sign of the Cross is like covering ourselves in the Blood of Jesus.  Whenever we make the Sign of the Cross with devout faith, we are renewing our baptismal commitment and the Lord communicates His life to us in new and unimaginable ways.  This Sign of Victory plunges us into the saving power of God foreshadowed in the Exodus.  In a world of all kinds of slavery and death, this Sign of Freedom reminds us that God has intervened.

This Sign of Salvation proclaims to all principalities of destruction and powers of darkness that God Himself has implicated Himself in our plight and helps us remember that we are never alone — no matter how difficult or dark the circumstances we must face.  This Sign of Hope renews our faith that the saving power of His Blood is such that no matter how intense the struggle, no irrational force in the heavens above or on the earth below is able to surmount the love of God.  Through renewing this Seal of our Hearts, the heart covers itself again with the Blood of the Lamb so that even in death it knows Eternal Life.

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National Catholic Register Radio

Dan Burke, Tim Drake, Thom Price and Jeanette DeMelo host a wonderful radio program on which Dan recently interviewed me about prayer and the recently published Hidden Mountain Secret Garden.   Jeanette continues by interviewing Brother John Paul Mary of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word  (Click here to listen.)  This religious community was very kind to me when I was student in Rome – offering me a place to land when I did not have one as well as good encouragement when it was most needed.  Dan also has invited me to post on his Roman Catholic Spiritual Direction blog which is a wonderful resource for the spiritual life.  For those of us from Denver, we are really happy for Jeanette who also blogs for the National Catholic Register and serves as Editor In Chief.

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The Mystery of the Cross

The Cross of Christ is the threshold where the broken heart of God embraces the broken heart of man.  There is no other way to God.  No technique, no method, can replace the Cross.  No amount of self-indulgence, insobriety or concern for worldly affairs can give us life like the moment of Golgatha.  In Christ crucified He shows us our sins against the vast horizons of his love.  If we allow these unimaginable horizons to pierce us to the heart, to draw us out of ourselves and into Him, then there is the most beautiful of all encounters.  This is a real heart to heart: we ponder the truth about ourselves in Him and God contemplates the truth about Himself in us.

Some say that they cannot find the Cross in their life.  They cannot find sacrifices to make.  If this is really true, I do not think it is, it means that there is a lack of love.  We can only truly love at our own expense.  Whenever we set out to do something beautiful for God, whenever we try to love to the end, we must go by the way of the Cross.  Only when we have spent ourselves for the Lord and for those He has entrusted to us do we begin to taste this mystery.  Here, the limits of our humanity meet the limitlessness of God.

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The Life of Prayer: the sure path to freedom

Christian prayer is a simple movement of the soul towards God. It is a movement of love, by which we cling to Him with the boldness of faith, trusting in his loving kindness. This movement of love is also a conversation, a heart to heart, in which He listens to all our concerns with the greatest of interest and in which He also shares the concerns of his heart with us. He actually hopes in us and puts his trust in us in a profound way.

Such prayer is possible because of what Christ has done for us. By his death on the Cross, He has authority over sin – the great barrier between us. He has suffered all its consequences so that all that is a betrayal of the truly human, all our ignobilitiy towards one another and towards ourselves, already has been destroyed in his death. These are dying realities in mortal humanity – but new humanity, the humanity restored by Christ, is no longer subject to them. By rising from the dead – the Lord rescued all that is good, holy and true about what it means to be free, to thrive, to fully be who we really are.

For each of us personally, this means, if we humbly ask Him, He not only removes the barriers of sin that imprison us in all kinds of falsehoods. He also reveals the truth about who He created us to be, and in revealing this truth, He establishes us in it. To finally be free, to finally be who we truly are – this is what the Lord wants for us. Freedom from sin is a great freedom – because we are free of those things that betray and undermine the goodness which God sees in us. Christian prayer is always gratefully aware of the price that was paid for this freedom.

This freedom bought at the price of Christ’s own blood comes from knowing the truth about sin in our lives. When we know what our sin really is, we have the freedom to reject it. This is why we examine our conscience. We look at our life through the magnifying glass of the Cross. Our hearts are pierced. In tears we realize how much we need the Lord and how much He loves us. Such tears help us correct our course, to renew our efforts to follow in his steps again. The Cross, that sign of God’s unfathomable love, brings into the proper perspective how we are living our life.

By his death, Jesus revealed how much we are loved. God would not love us if He did not see the good in which He created us. He is drawn to us, captivated by us. And it is an awesome good which He contemplates in us- for we are his image and likeness. So important is this for his work of Creation that he suffered death itself to rescue this image, that it might not perish, that it might achieve is destiny to show the glory of God in the World. Whoever thinks about his life in light of Christ’s great love for him – he comes to a certain knowledge about what obstacles in his life must be surrendered to the Lord. As this is done- this truth brings ever greater freedom, and new kinds of freedom that were previously unimaginable.

The greatest freedom we grow in is the freedom to love – when Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, He realized the perfection of humanity in his very person. This new life is not passive. It is filled with love. It is humanity set on fire with love. That humanity should be capable of living in ceaseless, unimpeded love – this is the great truth which we must not only know but live. And Jesus intercedes at the Father’s right hand that this fire might be ignited in our hearts too – that we too might love with the full freedom of the children of God. This Fire – it is the Holy Spirit.

As we examine our conscience and repent of sin, as we strive to live a new life, there are always new outpourings of the Holy Spirit, new ways the Fire of Love, the Fire of Freedom is ignited in our hearts. It grows and matures – as long as we are open to this outpouring and obedient to its promptings, we are on the sure path to freedom.

Part of a presentation to CLAY – a group of young people at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver.

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Why We Need the Cross

Only by grace does God’s love become the basis of all genuine communion in the world. There is no substitute for his love because out of his love alone were we created and endowed with sacred purpose. Only His love can help us realize the sacred purpose entrusted to us.

Every day, the enormity of this eternal reality crashes against the absence of love in our hearts, and we spend most of our time distracting ourselves from a deep ache for something that we know ought to be there and is not. Without the gravity of Divine Love to anchor us, the wild undercurrents of our hearts in the stormy swells of the untamed ocean of this life pull at us. Without His love we are completely subject to the irrational forces of the world of human affairs. God does not want us to be desacrated by our own urges and driviness any more than he wants us to be subject to the irrationality of others. Yet we fear the love He has for us.

If we are content with our fragile existence, we can try to ignore the manifestations of this love breaking in all around us at our own peril. Or, we can surrender our lack of love and seek out the Triune love that pulls us and promises a fullness of life. Hans Urs von Balthasar explains, once you choose to surrender to the overwhelming love of God, be advised: you are entering a vast wilderness – it is at once the unfamiliar but enchanting garden of your very self in whom the unfathomable mystery of the Trinity dwells, and at the same time it is the vast horizons of God in whom alone your true personal freedom to love is realized.

The Cross of Christ opens up this space for each of us. It is on the Cross where the reality of sin is revealed – we see the pain in God’s own heart over our rejection of Him. We also see that deeper than this pain is his hope in us, his desire to give us a second chance. He so wants us to know him personally that He would suffer anything for us, including the full consequences of our rejection. We are invited to believe in this love and by prayer to experience it, to be immersed in it, to live in it.

When by baptism into his death we become members of his Body, the Body which the great sacrament of Christ in the World. Whenever we renew our baptismal promises by choosing to act in this love by faith, the spiritual space this love engenders becomes realized in our hearts. Theologians love to debate how this choice can be truly ours and at the same time truly a gift from God – but it is possible to live in this choice, because this is what God most wants for us. When we do, the personal freedom that God deigned us to have in Him through Christ Jesus grows and allows us to become, like God himself – the praise of His glorious grace.

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Unity with the Trinity and the Cross of Christ

God has called us to participate by grace in his divine life of love. We know this and can experience by faith the communion of love that is God. Each Divine Person perfectly possesses the other divine persons as gift and at the same time perfectly gives the gift of his divine self to be possessed by the others. Such a circumcession of love is at once, in the words of St. Augustine, ever ancient and ever new: Father, Son and Holy Spirit are Giver and Gift to one another according to the inexhaustible freedom of their distinct relations in the One Divine Nature. Similarly as creatures, God wants us to know his love forever and to be loved by us.

To achieve this, He does not wish to absorb us into his being so that our own humanity is annihilated. He loves our humanity and out of love He created it. Rather, He wants us to thrive – and He knows because of the way we were created, we can only thrive in his particular love for the unique humanity each of us enjoys. He wants to destroy everything that compromises the integrity of our humanity and at the same time, He yearns to give all that is good, holy and true in humanity an eternal quality so that it will never again be subject to death or corruption. He wants us to thrive forever with Him.

He is able to do this because of who He is and how He made us. It is out of the inner-life of Divine Love that all creation flows and that creation is restored to its original purpose. Originally, God created the cosmos and the human person to enter into a perfect Communion of Love with Him and in doing so to reveal the glory of the Trinity. Christ Jesus entered into our history to restore this original purpose when we under the influence of evil rejected God. Embracing this rejection, Jesus offered us a second chance by re-establishing access to the Father through his death and resurrection. Thus, when we turn to Jesus in faith, the loving plan of God begins to be realized in us. St. Paul in Ephesians identifies this as our predestination in Christ to be “the praise of God’s glorious grace.”

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The Good Thief

Jesus, remember me, when you come into your kingdom….
…Amen, I say to you: this very day, you will be with me in Paradise.

We are all thieves. This is what is revealed in Genesis about Adam and Eve. Seduced by an enchanting proposition, we coveted fruit that did not belong to us. We wanted knowledge of good and evil which we did not earn. What did we believe that knowledge would give us but power? And why did we want this power but that we were not grateful for being made in the image and likeness of God? Not satisfied to accept as sheer gift God’s loving providence, we coveted divine powers out of lust to be in control. We thought we deserved to be gods though we had barely distinguished ourselves from thoughtless beasts. Like wild animals, we bit the hand that fed us. An echo of this resounds in every act of thievery; every act reminds us of what we made of ourselves before God.

The sense of security that we tried to steal for ourselves has led to our condemnation. The more we steal security, the more insecure we become. We have tried to rely on our skills to manipulate, deceive and overpower. But we have taken something we cannot repay. It is not that we have hurt God. In becoming thieves, we have destroyed ourselves, our capacity to trust God. Our covetousness has made us gluttons ever subject to insobriety. Rash judgment, contention and even strife overpower our hearts. In our pride, we have convinced ourselves that we cannot humble ourselves to beg. In our shame, we made ourselves too afraid to take responsibility. Who will pay the debt that alone can release us from our self-made prisons of fear, egoism and despair?

We need only look at the man crucified next to us. He too is a thief. He has no responsibility to bear our debt, yet He has stolen it from us. There he is drinking in all our malice, ingratitude, covetousness, petty quarreling, gluttony, insobriety, lust, anger, resentment, bitterness, fear and despair. Yet there is love in his eyes as his gaze fixes on us. We must not turn our eyes away from that face: beaten beyond recognition, covered with blood and spittle, and in dying agony. He has stolen the burden too great for us to bear, and if you fix your gaze on Him, He will steal your heart as well.

Once He has our hearts, how can we remain silent? How can we not trust? There are always malicious voices speaking words of condemnation. For them, such trust is ridiculous. In their chosen ignorance, they reject the one gift they need the most and He alone can give.  This gift cannot be stolen.  It must be recieved. But with mocking manipulation, they belittle the work He wroughts for us.  In the place of true freedom offered them as a gift, they bitterly demand a cheap parlor trick, “Come down off that Cross.” 

Since that day, this has ever been the monotonous condemnation of Hell in this world.  Why does God allow suffering?   Why does He not magically stop it?   Why does not God save Himself?  And so, even if it is only at the evening of our lives, we find ourselves his witnesses before this challenge. Gazing in the eyes of Christ, you know that this challenge cannot go unanswered.  As your own voice echoes, you find the freedom to take responsibility for yourself and for the first time you have the courage to accept the consequences for what you have done.  This courage comes from Christ who is bearing these consequences for you and with you – He will never abandon you.  You can trust Him because you see in his eyes, He trusts you even more.

Fellow thieves, let us together overcome the temptation to think our voices as a condemned criminals have no credibility. The only ones with any credibility at all are those who have looked into His eyes. Your voice, fellow thief, is credible to Him, and in the end; He is the only One who counts. Your prayer is a precious consolation for the One who bears so much rejection – and for this small recompense on your part, He is giving you eternal life even now.

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The Passion: Where we learn to rest in the Heart of Christ

During Holy Week, we are invited to enter into the heart of the Lord by sharing His passion with Him.  This can only happen through prayer.  Only through prayer can we pick up on the subtle movements of his heart, movements that involve ourselves, those we love and the whole world.  When you enter into the Heart of the Lord of Hosts, he immediately baths you in His Blood, purifying us of sin and filling us with a loved filled hope which not even death can overcome.

On Thursday night, we will celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  This is the sacred Banquet in which Christ made himself our spiritual food.  His Body and His Blood are given to save us and sustain us in our Christian way of life.  Like the martyrs before us, without the flesh and blood of Christ, we cannot go on.  Everyone who has believed in the power of Christ’s Blood has experienced this saving and sustaining power.  They know His Blood is Life in a world of death.  They experience deep in their hearts that His Blood is not an escape from this world, the Blood of Jesus is the world’s only salvation.  When believers drink from the Cup of the New Covenant, Christ’s Eternal Life flows into them, and if they are open in faith, this divine outpouring will fill them to the point where they live no longer their own life, but His Life in them.   

Those who allow themselves to be completely immersed in the life of Christ think like Him, act like Him, and more than anything else, pray like Him.  They see the world through resurrected eyes – what others see as purposeless, they know as filled with invincible hope.  Such men and women become living signs of hope.  Such hope looks crazy to those who refuse it.  To be a sign of hope means always to appear as if you have lost your mind.  Those wise with the wisdom of this world call this delusional.   The great spiritual writers call this Holy Inebriation.

To conquer death, we must be recreated in Truth.  Recreation, the new creation, re-establishes us in the Truth we have primordially rejected.  Without the Truth, we die and our lives are simply a living death.  We must know the Truth, we must live the Truth.  We must feel and think the Truth: the Truth about ourselves, the Truth about God. 

To be inebriated with the Blood of Christ is to be completely overwhelmed by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Lord who teaches all truth.   The Holy Spirit comes through Christ’s blood and into the deep hidden recesses of our memories, thoughts and feelings – making all things new, conforming all these inner powers to the One who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.   For this new creation to begin, we must follow Christ into the Garden and learn to say with Him, “Father, if it is your will, take this cup from me.  But not my will, your will be done.”

Those who have the courage to learn to pray this prayer with and in the Heart of Jesus will discover the blessings of poverty, hunger, thirst, sorrow, purity of heart, peacemaking, and persecution – not only for righteousness sake, but also for the sake of Jesus Himself.  This happens today in alarming public ways.  It also happens in the more hidden places of our day to day work and family life.  St. Therese, the Little Flower, first tasted it after Christmas Midnight Mass.  Maximilian Kolbe filled himself with it in a starvation bunker. The point is when you are rejected, despised or betrayed because of your love of Jesus, Jesus has blessed you, permitted you to be identified with Him.  He has entrusted you with discipleship and is teaching you how to carry your Cross and follow Him.  The Veneration of the Cross on Good Friday has a whole new meaning for those following their crucified God.

This must be difficult to read – indeed it is solemn and the most serious reality of this life.  The truth about ourselves and about the Lord is hard to think about.  Oftentimes we feel the urge to skip over Christ’s Passion, to leave him in the garden or on the Cross so that we can rush to the resurrection.  Indeed, the mystery of Holy Saturday and the wonder of Easter Morning we will share in later posts.    But for now, let us rest in the heart of Christ: the night before He died, His struggle with the Cross, His last loud cry.   It is in the Passion that Christ’s heart is revealed and given to us.  It is in attending to what he suffered that we learn to rest in his heart.  It is in the Cross that we find union with God.  This is why what we are celebrating this week is not simply the calling to mind of tragic historic events.  Instead, we are reflecting on the very mystery of our new creation – how that mystery was revealed in history, and how that mystery carries us in the present moment.  Those who will wait with the Lord and keep vigil with Him will find themselves plunged into His life in a completely new way. 

Through the Blood the the Lord and the power of the Holy Spirit, Christians find freedom from every lack of love.  Where there is no love, they find a way to put love, and because of the power of God, they find love.   Where there is a struggle to forgive, they find the courage to surrender their bitterness to God, and discover compassion for even their enemies.  Where there is the sting of indignation, the Holy Spirit teaches them how to pray for their persecutors.  May the Lord fill you with these graces as you struggle to rest in his Heart.

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