Good Shepherd’s Weekly
E-Letter

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Global Catholic News

From zenit.org

Catholic News Services

Catholic Culture

Today’s Mass Readings

_______________

Important Political Issues for today’s Catholics

Politics and the Family

Defending Marriage

Defending the Unborn

Protect Marriage

 This week has been rich in its liturgical celebrations. We began this week on Monday with the Feast day of the Triumph or Exaltation of the Holy Cross. As Christians, the Cross of Christ stands at the center of salvation history. The mystery of God’s revelation and covenant with human persons and the truth of God’s love that is revealed in that mystery through time, from creation to the final consummation of all things at the eschaton, can only be entered and properly contemplated through the portal of the Cross. Only when Christ is “lifted up” on the Cross will he begin to draw all people to himself, will they see the “I am” of Jesus and will they have eternal life. Only when we embrace the Cross of Christ and come to love the Crucified One can we begin to know anything about God the Father. The mystery of the Cross of Christ is so profound that we can never truly know the depth of love that it reveals and yet to those who love God, Christ reveals the Father’s love until we can truly begin to see the Cross as the Way, the Truth and the Life. If we are to follow Christ at all then we must begin at the Cross and we must be willing to bear our own daily crosses as an oblation of love to the Father in the manner of Christ Jesus. We must be willing to say with Paul, “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” (1Cor2,2) The Cross of Christ must be the center of our faith, hope and love and we must build our lives on that foundation.
Today in our world we often hear about the cross wars. Legal battles are constantly fought to remove the symbol of the cross from public view. Many people wear the cross as a fashionable piece of jewelry but is that same cross inscribed in their hearts? Are we willing to embrace the Cross of Christ today and lift it up as a symbol of life and victory? It seems that many people today shy away from the Cross as a sign of sacrificial love and redemptive suffering. In our increasingly narcissistic world we find it difficult to renounce ourselves and to suffer for love of others. A broken cross in our world means broken marriages, broken families and relationships, a broken society of lost and broken people who cannot love because they cannot renounce their own selfish interests and desires. The Cross draws all people together in love and solidarity while the loss of the cross in our world today means greater divisions and factions around self-proclaimed ideologies with only the self as god.
The perfect place for us to contemplate the wonder and beauty of God’s love and the perfection of obedience that Jesus the Son of God shows to the Father is at the foot of the Cross. It is there that we find ourselves on the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. We contemplate with Mary the mystery of God’s love that is revealed in the suffering of her Son for the sins of all people. Here we stand with the Sorrowing Mother and behold her as our mother who sorrows for all children of the earth who suffer from sin and alienation from God’s love. We have been entrusted to her as her children and in her heart she feels the pain of any of her children who reject the gift of salvation that God offers to the world in Christ. What Jesus her son suffers bodily on the cross she suffers in her heart. His heart is physically pierced by a soldier’s lance but her heart is also pierced by a sword of truth and knowledge of the thoughts and hearts of those who reject the love of God.
I think that it is difficult for us to truly understand the Sorrow of Our Lady of Sorrows. Often we think of sorrow from the perspective of our disordered passions in which we experience it as a feeling sorry for ourselves and some loss that we are suffering which leads to sadness and morbid depression. We might tend to think that Mary is sorrowing because she is losing her son. We also may have experienced sorrow as a feeling sorry for another person who is suffering. Mary is sorrowing because Jesus is suffering. I don’t think this truly captures the Sorrow of Our Lady of Sorrows. I think that Mary fully trusted in God and was wholly surrendered to his will. She had a deep sense of the necessity of the Cross and the tremendous love that was being showered on the world through the suffering of her son. She shared in her son’s suffering but that suffering was a suffering for the world and for those who were lost in sin. The Sorrow of Our Lady of Sorrows is not for herself or her son, she knows that they will soon share the joy of heaven, but it is rather for all those who will turn away from the cross and from the love of God and who become lost in the hell of alienation from God. God has given the world such a precious and beautiful gift of love and life in the Suffering Servant, the Crucified Christ and we could follow the way of the cross to eternal life in God’s kingdom but many of the children of this world choose to turn away from that beautiful gift and become lost in the darkness of unbelief. This causes our Blessed Mother sorrow. She continues to sorrow for the children of this earth that are lost to sin and unbelief.
It is well for us to stand at the foot of the cross with Mary and contemplate her Sorrow. We see people everyday who are lost in disbelief and yet we are unmoved and untouched by their situation and many times these people may be our good friends or family members. We do nothing to try to help them out of their darkness and to share with them the gift of the Cross. We don’t want to be bothered or to bother them so we stand by as people jeer at the Cross and mock the Crucified One who suffers for them. If we could for just a moment experience just a little fraction of the Sorrow of Our Lady of Sorrows for the lost ones of the world it would probably blow us away and keep us on our knees the rest of our lives. Perhaps a little time at the foot of the Cross with Mary will lead us to offer more prayers for those who reject the Cross of Christ.