Heavy

“The Cross is not pain, or annoyance, or bitterness. It is the holy wood on which Jesus Christ triumphs... and where we triumph too, when we receive what He sends us with cheerful and generous hearts.” (Saint Josemaria, “The Forge”, at 788).

Jesus Carrying the Cross (Unknown)

It is a very difficult thing to be a Catholic or a Christian.

Ours is not an easy religion.

God did not tell us that we should dance our way to Heaven on a floating cloud of happiness and pleasure.  Instead, He told us that if we wished to follow Him, we must take up our Cross and follow Him…

And the Cross is HEAVY.  In fact, the Holy Cross is so heavy that God Himself dropped it three times on His way to Calvary.  And though this was a physical Cross and the dropping of it was physical and obvious, it could also be seen as a metaphor as well.

Saint Therese of Lisieux said that we should not be afraid to fail or fall because Christ Himself fell three times on the way to Calvary.  And each time He needed to pick Himself up.  Each fall hurt Him.  Perhaps He fell directly onto His knees and bruised them and ripped the skin from them.  Perhaps he landed on His Face and was left with blackened eyes and the marks of the Cross against the wound on His Holy Back.  Perhaps He was crushed under the weight of the Cross. 

Certainly He resisted the temptation to curse the Cross.  Certainly He resisted the temptation to give up altogether and remain there on the ground – broken and bruised and bloodied.  Certainly He resisted the temptation to ascend to Heaven and give up on the whole miserable human race.

I have often wondered whether the sight of the Blessed Virgin standing so faithfully as a witness to His suffering was the only reason that God had to stay on that Cross until death.  Perhaps it was for love of Her soul alone that He remained.  He watched her until His final hour knowing that if nobody ever loved their God on their earth, there was in fact ONE soul deserving of Heaven.  And that sinless soul of the Blessed Virgin was perhaps the whole entire reason He was able to stay there – clinging to the suffering that He never merited to bear.

For the Blessed Virgin stood there as a conduit for miserable souls like mine.  She is able to take the misery of my own soul and turn it into love of my Blessed Lord…  And this is because she understood…  “The Cross is not pain, or annoyance, or bitterness. It is the holy wood on which Jesus Christ triumphs... and where we triumph too, when we receive what He sends us with cheerful and generous hearts.” (Saint Josemaria, “The Forge”, at 788).

And I consider the heaviness of that Cross and the relative lightness of mine, and I pray for the Grace to see the Blessed Virgin there, witnessing for me and reminding me that my Lord and my God suffered far more than I ever could…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.