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Take Up Your Cross&
"... let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." Mark 8:34
Each year as Lent begins we are invited to take up our crosses and follow Jesus to Calvary. Each year I energetically resist that idea. And then, without fail, a cross is handed to me. I can choose to walk with it or not. Cross carrying is a fact of living authentically as a Christian. It applies to every day of my life, not just the next forty. Jesus never said it would be easy. The cost of following him is dear. There are dues to pay. There are crosses to carry.
There are crosses to carry in everyone's life. All of us suffer at one time or another. Sometimes it involves the illness or the death of someone we love. We may go through crisis on the job or financial insecurity. We may be robbed, raped, humiliated, or betrayed. You can make your own list. Our crosses are individual and they are painful and they are inevitable. No one knows why we suffer but we all do. Our crosses cannot be ignored; they must be accepted. Accepted, they can be borne with the help of God.
Once we may have been taught that a loving God selects our crosses for us. But more recently, as we have come to better understand the love of God, we believe, instead, that our crosses are the result of evil in the world just as Jesus' own cross was. We have also come to understand that God suffers with us and in mercy and compassion uses our suffering in a redemptive way.
As catholic Christians we are taught we can offer our suffering to the Lord so that it is united with that of Jesus. It will still hurt, but now it can be a loving and reconciling act for ourselves as well as others. In the midst of pain we can take comfort in knowing that Jesus has also promised to lighten the load and make our crosses endurable (Mt. 11:28). We can depend on this promise in overcoming our day-to-day difficulties. We can also depend on the joy that awaits us in the heavenly kingdom. Without the cross and without the journey to Calvary there could not have been a resurrection.v
Help me, Jesus, to accept and carry whatever crosses come into my life. Amen.
Give an example of someone you know who has carried his or her cross with faith and courage.
What benefits do you see from the crosses in your life?
Margaret Nelson
Mounds View
Next Sundays Readings:
Gen. 15:5-12, 17-18 -- Psalm 27:1,7-9,13-14 -- Phil 3:20-4:1 -- Luke 9:28-36
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