Way of the Cross Revisited

I met with Deacon Jerry today. He's really been wonderful. And he let me into the Chapel to pray the Way of the Cross.

I used the Way of the Cross for the Bereaved that I've already mentioned. I had already used it for a spiritual Way of the Cross this morning, at Momma's Grave, after OOR and MP. I really like it very much ... and interestingly for me, while I was doing it in the Chapel, I suddenly remembered something else.

Years ago ... I'm not sure how many now even ... 20 or 25 or 30 ... my sister entered a hospital and began a journey and a travail that I didn't understand at all at the time. But I knew that she was suffering, and began saying a Way of the Cross for her in the Chapel at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, where we then lived. I prayed the Way of the Cross daily for my sister ... for how long? I can't remember. A few weeks I think. In any event, in the Holy Family Cathedral Chapel, in which I was saying the Way of the Cross for Momma, I suddenly remembered saying the Way of the Cross years ago for my sister. I remembered vividly some of the feelings more than anything else ... the emptiness, the fear, the anxiety, the indescribably feeling of a heart full of turmoil and love and horror and shock, crying out to God. I remembered the way the light shone through the stained glass of the UTK Chapel. And I realized that here and now not only reminded me of there and then, but they were connected at some level I don't claim to understand. Bereaved I am now for my Momma ... but not only for Momma; also for our family; for all families.

That feeling of connection with what John Paul II calls in Salvifici Doloris the World of Suffering is with me now. Deacon Jerry spoke of the souls who may be (who knows) huddled around the Altar at Mass seeking sustenance from the Redemptive Shed Blood and Broken Body of Christ. Perhaps we are all, if we only knew it, huddled always around the Altar in the World of Suffering seeking God's Mercy, seeking the Suffering Servant's gifts of Love and Hope, seeking the Man of Sorrows and the Mother of Sorrows and all those in the Church, the Body of Christ, who have Followed Christ on the long, hard Way of the Cross.

The pain and suffering are indescribable even though we all try, don't we, to try. When in the History of the Church our sufferings surpass our capacity for expression and yet our hearts feel that they are rent and burst, we so often turn to the Book of Job or the Book of Psalms ... Ps 30 or 51 or 102 or so many, many others ... and I too need the very words and voices of others to express what I can't describe. And I need the Words and the Voice of the Son of Man on the Cross ... and the Voice of the Church treading the Way of the Cross ... to say what I think and feel.

This for me today may be God's Gift, and the Church's Gift, by way of Vocation: to suffer, to suffer with Christ, to suffer with His Church, uniting my own sufferings with those of Christ, with those of all in the Church, with those of all in the World of Sufferings.

This is somewhat of an answer to my broken heart and my felt neediness that seem so overwhelming at times.

And this is somewhat of an answer to my sense of Futilitates and my need for some kind of Purpose. And also somewhat of an answer to my sense of Loneliness and my need for some kind of connection with someone else: with Christ, yes of course, but also with Christ in Others: in the Pilgrim Church.

Reified in (yes) Courage and Work (following Haggai in the Office of Readings) to rebuild a shattered Home in this concrete place that was Home to Momma and I. Rebuilding a Home that keeps me connected with Momma ... and with the World of Suffering ... and with the Church ... as an Ikon keeps us connected ... Type connecting us with Archetype or Prototype, as St John of Damascus says. If St Paul can call mortal body a Temple of the Holy Spirit, why couldn't this home be a Temple Rebuilt ... again following OOR's Haggai and Zechariah ... or was it Zephaniah ... on the then Call of God to Rebuild the Temple.

This kind of existential Reification is really I think what I need in the Here and Now. O Lord send me Your Call with Concrete in-my-face Plainness so even I can see it. Of Abstract Faith, Hope, and Love I have none; give me Your Concrete Faith Hope and Love in the Here and Now.

And help me in my longing and loss for Momma find an opportunity to connect with the World of Suffering and therefore with You and Your Cross.

Charles Delacroix
Feast of St Luke