Thursday after Ash Wednesday
Lent is a season in which we are challenged to integrate the ambiguous journey of faith. It is a season to learn more deeply the secrets of the paschal mystery. By losing our lives on the cross, we gain the glory of eternal life.
The Sign of the Cross
The lovers of Christ lift out their hands to
the great gift of suffering.
For how could they seek to be warmed and clothed
and delicately fed
to wallow in praise and to drink deep draughts
of an undeserved affection,
have castle for home and a silken couch for bed,
when He the worthy went forth, wounded and hated,
and grudged of even a place to lay his head?
This is the badge of the friends of the Man of Sorrows:
the mark of the cross, faint replica of His,
become ubiquitous now; it spreads like a wild blossom
on the mountain of time and in each of the crevices.
Oh, seek that land where it grows in such rich abundance
with its thorny stem and its scent like bitter wine,
for wherever Christ walks he casts its seed
and He scatters its purple petals.
It is the flower of His marked elect, and the fruit it bears is divine.
Choose it, my heart. It is a beautiful sign.
Jessica Powers
One of the crises of our times is the loss of symbols and images that once gave us a sense of identity and destiny a central image was the cross, a sign of God's redemptive love as well as the tragedy of human sin. Discipleship demands that the cross be embraced those who befriend Christ not only accept the crosses that come in life; they intentionally seek to embrace the suffering that is part of the body of Christ.
Are the crosses you now carry chosen willingly or born begrudgingly? Do you see the cross as a “beautiful sign”?
An excerpt from Ashes to Easter: Lenten Meditations by Robert F. Morneau
