The Cross?

We have moved from the short Ordinary Time, with its pondering the Incarnation, to the season of Lent, and what we call the Pascal Mystery. But wait…let’s not let go of the Incarnation so quickly. It has three steps, all of them down: the Baby, then the Cross, then the Bread. As Jack Shea wrote, “Like a baritone in a bar, he never goes home.” Drunk with love, Catherine says.

We enter the season of the cross. Have you ever wondered why we had to be saved this way? With that Baby, all grown up, hanging on a cross? Be attentive to the sequence of the readings. We are given a preview of how it will all end: the transfiguration. Then we are told he thirsts, not for water, really, but for us. Next, we learn that we really are quite blind to what is going on, and finally, that like Lazarus, we need to be brought back from the dead.

 So Love sets out in search for us. He goes looking for wherever we are. And where are we? Human trafficked during the Super Bowl. Demeaned and exposed on the Porno-screen. Tortured in Ukraine. Buried in rubble in Seria. This is where we are. This is today’s cross. The crucified is no stranger. He swallows death, the poison pill, and dies. But Love like his cannot die. Instead he does away with death, and safe in this Shepherd’s arms, so shall we.

 I don’t like to look at you…

 hanging there, all bloody.

 I don’t like to watch the news either.

 For there you are again, in all your disguises.

 What will we invent next, to wound you?

 So, they all went home Good Friday night.

 Surely, this is no way to save a world…

 or is it?

 And the Father said, “Watch Me!”

 In the darkness of our winters

 we too wait…to be brought back from the dead.