The Cross

What tends to challenge me most these days is the Call of Christ to Surrender ... everything. Including, in my case, my own natural family.

There's no question of what is being asked. Of me, as of all of us. I am to take up my Cross daily (Lk 9) and Follow Christ, surrendering my own life and more (Mt 16) and this can and does extend to my natural family (Lk 14).

My mother died on August 22.

And I miss her so much.

Every day, sometimes every hour, every minute.

There's nothing wrong with this of course. But there's a big, big part of me that plain doesn't want to take up this Cross daily. There's a big part of me that really doesn't want to hurt. That plain doesn't want to surrender my Mom to God.

Yet she belongs to Him. She has always belonged to him. All things, all people, are His. Not mine. His. And He loves my Mom from all eternity with an infinite love that is infinitely greater than anything I can every know.

And yet ... and yet ... sometimes I find myself crying and crying and calling out, "Come back, O come back."

I know she's not coming back. Not in the sense in which she was here before, anyway. And when I really think of it, what a cruel thing to wish on her ... on anyone who has passed on to a better place, to ask her to come back. God loves her and will take care of her with His infinite love. The Office for the Dead is full of readings affirming this.

But if she is to live in Him she had to die here. Die to me. And when she died, a big, big part of me died. And still dies. Every day I die. My heart aches, my whole being feels the weight of the Cross, and I am bid to bear that which I do not want to bear at all.

Still, isn't that what it really means to bear a Cross. When Jesus bore His Cross, there's no indication that he wanted to bear it. He certainly willed himself to Bear It, as He willed Himself to Die for us. From all eternity this was God's will: that Jesus should die for us in the great Sacrifice that is re-presented in each Eucharistic Sacrifice of the Mass. But Jesus, True God and True Man, suffering and falling three times on His Way of the Cross, surely did not, humanly speaking, want the pain and suffering. Yet He chose pain and suffering. He took up His Cross.

And now asks me to take up mine.

Oh Lord, Just for Today, I ask you to give me the strength to do what I really don't want to do.
Just for Today, I beg You to go before me Bearing Your Great Cross and showing me the Way for me to bear my little Cross.
Oh Lord it doesn't really feel like such a little Cross yet I know my Cross is but a handful of slivers from Your Own Cross.
Oh Lord help me surrender my dear mother into Your Loving Care
Oh Lord help me to die daily to myself and live to you daily.
Oh Lord help me to remember that for me as for us all, as for St Paul, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain
Oh Lord help me to Follow You on the Way of Your Cross
Lord Jesus Christ help me to remember that here I have no lasting place
Lord Jesus Christ help me to find in Your Cross everything that matters in this world or the next
Lord Jesus, Man of Sorrows, help me to lay my own Sorrows at the Foot of Your Cross
Holy Mary, Mother of Sorrows, help me to find in Your Son my mother now passed away and gone from this world
Holy Mary, Mother of Sorrows, help me to find in Your Son all my brothers and sisters in the Church, my true mother on earth
Oh Mary accept into your maternal care my dear mother
And Oh my dear Lord please take good care of my dear Mother
And dear Lord please take good care of me
Lord help me to embrace Your Cross that is the Tree of Death and the Tree of Life
Oh Lord let me find in Your Cross, along with St John of the Cross, everything and nothing, all that is and all that is not.
Oh Lord let me find in You all that is You and in You all my brothers and sisters in this world and the next
Oh Lord let me find in You You and in You my Mother
Oh Lord let Your Will Not Mine be done now and always
Just for today.

Love in Christ,

Charles Delacroix
Monday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time