We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you.
Because by your holy cross, you have redeemed the world.
Reading
When the chief priests and the guards saw [Jesus] they cried out,
"Crucify him, crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Take him yourselves and crucify him.
I find no guilt in him." ... They cried out, "Take him away, take him away! Crucify him!"
Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your king?" The chief priests answered,
"We have no king but Caesar." Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.
So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross himself he went out to what is called
the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha. (John 19: 6, 15-17)
Reflection
We often hear people speak of "crosses" they have in their lives. When we listen more closely, we see that they are speaking of things they did not choose, things they would never choose, things that have been forced on them: some illness that drags on, a physical or emotional injury that leaves deep scars, a person at home, work or school who is very difficult for us to deal with. For such people, a "cross" is something alien, unwanted, imposed on them. For us who are on the spectrum, we could add our extreme sensitivities, our anxieties, our meltdowns, and how other people misunderstand these things and may accuse us falsely of a negative attitude, or even of being a faker.
The problem with seeing a "cross" as something imposed from without, against our will, is that it can lead to resentment, bitterness, and even despair. We see no purpose in our "cross", and no way out.
This is not what the Cross meant to Jesus. Nor is it what He meant when He challenged us to take up our crosses daily and follow Him. Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus says that His death is not imposed on Him. He accepts and embraces it as a way of love, His supreme gift to us, and His supreme way of revealing the Father’s love for us. Jesus is resolved to be totally faithful to His Father’s mission, even if it means suffering and death.
Jesus invites us to follow Him. He invites us to accept the amazing love He has for us, and to place our trust completely in that love – even if it leads to occasional experiences of misunderstanding, rejection, and other kinds of suffering. In this way, our crosses are transformed from impositions from without that we resent to gifts of love from our hearts that we embrace out of radical trust in the love of God for us. Through them, we stand with Jesus in His sufferings, just like we stand with our friends and family in theirs. Through them, Jesus assures us that He stands with us, and gives us a share in His own love and joy. He sustains us in our fidelity, so that our crosses become acts of love and gratefulness.
Prayer
Father of mercy,
grant us Your strength and wisdom,
that we may follow You in all things.
Help us to be so committed to following Jesus
and so trusting in His love for us
that even the sufferings and trials of our lives
may be transformed into ways for us
to stand by the Lord in His trials
and to experience His loving presence in our own.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.