Do you want the Cross? Meditating on Jesus' Passion

My heart was not in Lent this year. I grudgingly went to the Ash Wednesday service. Inside I was feeling farther from God than close to Him. The only thing in prayer that I felt called to offer up for Lent was donuts...talk about feeling like a spiritual weakling! I dreaded answering the fated question, "So, Erica, what are you giving up for Lent?" I listened to my friend's grand plans to give up alcohol or Facebook or television AND movies for Lent....and I had donuts on my list. I felt tired, weary, and it was day 1 of 40.

Something changed. It may seem like a simple revelation, but it was the way it hit my heart. I was suffering restlessly through a Thursday in Adoration at St. Joseph Church with the youth catechism (YouCat), half-reading/half-skimming/(half-nodding off) through a section about Jesus (woah...), just trying to get through my prayer time, when I happened to catch the question,

 "Was Jesus really dead? Maybe he was able to rise again because he only appeared to have suffered death." and the answer, "Jesus really died on the Cross; his body was buried. All the sources testify to this" (YouCat paragraph 103).

I re-read that statement probably 10 times in a row. I felt baffled by it. My heart sunk - I thought about the fact that Roman soldiers had made the determination that Jesus was dead. The finality of death applied to Jesus, the Son of God, Jesus, all powerful healer, Lord of Lords, King of Kings... hit me like a ton of bricks. Death. It seems so final...so unfitting...so unreal. I knew God was trying to speak something to my heart....but what?

After that "Jesus really died" moment in Adoration, God started to give me ample opportunities to pray the Stations of the Cross, the traditional 14 step journey with Jesus to his death and burial in the tomb. All different versions and meditations of it (God knows I get bored easily...), first it was Stations that my friends invited me to come to based on the Scripture verses surrounding Jesus' Passion and Death, then it was the Religious Ed Stations with the kids in the program I coordinate, and finally a candlelit meditation where my brother happened to be running sound.

Slowly the power of Jesus' free choice to save us started to sink in to my mind. During the last set of Stations, as I finally closed my eyes and settled into prayer, the haunting image of Jesus' face with the crown of thorns surrounding his head came into my mind. There was no hate there, only love. "Jesus was going to die" the phrase still resounding in my heart from Adoration. He knew that he was going to die, and he was choosing to die. I sat with that image for days afterwards. And even though the image of His suffering was in my mind, I still felt so far from Him. Like a stranger observing an historical event that happened far too long ago...and not a disciple, let alone a close friend...

A couple of weeks later, I found myself at Adoration again. This time I came expecting, listening, and ready for Jesus to say something to me. I opened a prayer book to see that the reflection for that day was on "Meditating on the Passion"....I will simply write here part of the meditation I read that struck me,

"We do well then to contemplate Our Lord's Passion....sometimes we imagine ourselves to be there, present amongst those who witnessed those moments....We put ourselves among the onlookers and see the disfigured yet noble face of Jesus. Astonishingly, we feel his infinite patience. With the help of grace, moreover, we can also try to contemplate the Passion of Christ as He himself lived it. It seems impossible, and of course it will always be a very impoverished view...but it can become for us an extraordinarily rich source of prayer..." (In Conversation with God, page 231-232).

My immediate reaction to was to rebel against this idea. Who wants to walk with Jesus on the Way of the Cross? It's a terrible, ugly, a brutal thing to witness....and now you are saying that you want me to imagine that I am one with Jesus in His suffering, in His Passion? St. Leo the Great tells us, "Whoever truly wishes to venerate the Passion of the Lord should contemplate Jesus crucified with the eyes of his soul, and in such a way that he identifies his own body with that of Jesus." Really Lord? What good could that possibly do for us now? This happened so long ago. As if the author could read my mind, the next section of the reflection was entitled, "The fruits of such meditation." So this is a good thing God?

"The divine and human events of the Passion will then pierce our soul as words spoken to us by God to uncover the secrets of our heart and show us what he expects of our lives...It is in Christ's wounds that we learn of the evil of sin which condemned him to suffer...It is in Christ's wounds that we find proof of his great love for us, for He endured such terrible pain and suffering precisely so as to show us just how much he loved us...A sin, therefore, is so much more than a human error...His Passion will inflame our love..."

The gravity and finality of Christ's Passion and Death should weigh on my mind and heart. Not just in moments when I am praying but in moments when I am faced with sin, with struggle, and with my own suffering. Both when it is a cross that I want to take on (like facing Confession when it is extremely difficult or offering up donuts for Lent) AND when it is a cross that I do not want (like taxes or illness or loneliness or pain). Jesus suffered as much as it is possible for a man to suffer, He truly died, and He truly was raised. This is what we enter into during Holy Week and at every Mass where we enter into His Passion, Death, and Resurrection. The joy of the Resurrection is found through this Way of the Cross (not around it) - may we all have the courage to enter in - both in prayer and in our lives.