Here is recent talk I give at the Newman Center for a Good Friday Mini-Retreat
Today we reverence
the death and suffering of Jesus Christ and on Easter we will celebrate in the
Lord’s resurrection. We’ve all heard the story right? Scripture tells us that Jesus
was betrayed by Judas for 30 pieces of silver, arrested and found innocent by
Pontius Pilate of the charges brought against him, but falsely condemned to
death in an effort to appease the crowds and the Pharisees who demanded that He
be crucified. We have been told that while this was happening Peter denied
Jesus three times and that when Jesus was crucified on the cross many of the
people who followed Him, including his disciples were nowhere to be seen with
the exception of Joseph. The bible tells us that Jesus was scourged and crowned
with a wreath of thorns, that He himself had to carry the cross he was to be
crucified on up to Golgotha which means “Place of the Skull.” On the way there
Simon the Cyrene was constrained to help carry the cross for Jesus part of the
way because Jesus was so weak they feared that he might die before he could be
hung on the cross. Scripture tells us that on the way to Golgotha Jesus fell
three times and throughout his journey He was mocked and ridiculed by the soldiers
and the crowds that watched. We’ve heard how Jesus was struck multiple times,
spat on, and terrorized and that when He finally reached the place where He was
hung Jesus was stripped of his garments and nailed to the cross where he hung
for three hours and was then pronounced dead all the while being continuously
mocked and ridiculed by the crowds who watched. In the crowd Mary, his own
mother watched helplessly while here Son was murdered and after He died they
placed Him in her arms, there was nothing she could do for him. Like I said,
we’ve all heard the story.
Tonight I want to
take a closer look at the suffering and death of Christ, the cross that he
carried, as well as the cross that I carry in the midst of trying to follow
Jesus and simply get through life.
Father Bruce has
mentioned several times in his Homilies that Jesus did not promise us
happiness, instead he said pick up your cross and follow me. In Matthew
16:24-25 Jesus tells us “whoever wishes to follow me must deny himself, take up
his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but
whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” These verses can also be
found in the Gospel of Mark and Luke. It’s a reality we must all live with, we
are not promised happiness instead we are given a cross. Jesus had to carry his
own cross and walk to Golgotha where he was crucified, and in a similar way we
carry our own cross everyday as we walk through life.
The idea of carrying
a cross is not news for me; in fact I am reminded everyday of one of the
crosses I carry as I follow Jesus. When I was a junior in high school I was
diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. For those of you who don’t know people with
Fibromyalgia have overactive nerves that cause widespread pain throughout the
body especially in the muscles and joints. My condition won’t kill me, but it
is something I will live with for the rest of my life. I wake up most mornings
feeling like I worked out too hard the night before and on my bad days I feel
like I got hit by a truck and can barely get out of bed. Each day I am greeted
with pain and so I am no stranger to the idea of suffering, especially in the
physical sense, but despite my condition Jesus tells us “whoever chooses to
follow me must deny themselves, pick up their cross and follow me.” For me this
means, I can’t let the fibromyalgia win, and being in pain is not an excuse to
not get out of bed, to not experience life, and to not follow Jesus, but having
said this it’s been a struggle.
The reality is that
life itself is a struggle and that there are going to be times in our life
where we go through pain and suffering. Jesus himself who was God, had to
suffer in his lifetime, and we struggle and suffer throughout our lives as well,
suffering is simply a part of life. St. Paul tells us in Philippians 1:29 “For
to you has been granted, for the sake of Christ, not only to believe in him but
also to suffer for him.” In many ways we can look upon our sufferings as ways
to grow closer to God and to somewhat understand a little bit of the pain and
hurt that Jesus underwent when he crucified on this day almost 2 thousand years
ago. At the same time we can look at our sufferings as opportunities to look to
the Lord for healing and help in our distress, we can use our moments of suffering
as reminders that we are in need of God’s grace and support. The important
thing is to remember that just as we suffer in our lives, Jesus did the same
and then some. It is important to remember that in Jesus is a God that
understands the weight of carrying a cross and the afflictions that happen in
this world.
When I think about
carrying a cross, I think of three things, I think of pain, suffering, and
brokenness, all of which I have been able to experience recently in my own
life, and all of which Jesus also experienced in his. You see at the beginning
of this semester something happened that changed my entire world. I found out
that my 16 year old cousin Samantha whom I am really close with was diagnosed
with Stage 4 Lymphoma. I will never forget the night I got the call when my dad
told me my cousin was in the hospital and that the doctors found a tumor the
size of a softball in front of her heart. When I found out, I was actually here
at Newman in the middle of a meeting with some girls for the women’s retreat.
As soon as I got off the phone, I told them what happened and we went to the
chapel to pray. As we were praying so many questions arose in my head. Would my
cousin survive this? Would she die? Could my family live without her? Would
this be the thing that broke us? Would everything be ok? What was going to
happen next? There was nothing I could do except pray.
A few days later I was able to go
home and spend a day with my family and my cousin at the hospital; being with
her seemed all too familiar to me. You see when I was 13 my younger sister Mia
was diagnosed with leukemia and after almost 3 years of treatment she beat it. I
knew my cousins condition wasn’t a death sentence, I knew she could beat the
cancer, but at the same time I also knew there was a chance she could die. You
see even though my sister beat the cancer, there were far too many close calls,
and so my cousin’s diagnosis terrified me.
After spending a day
at the hospital with my cousin and my family, I had to return back home to San
Diego for school. The walk through union Station to my train was one of the
hardest things I ever had to endure. With each step I took towards the platform
where my train waited for me I felt my heart break, and with each tear that I
shed, I felt my insides be torn apart, I believe that it was only through the
grace of God that I had the strength to leave my family and my cousin behind to
come back to school.
When you find out that someone you love might die, the
world stops. Everything that used to matter no longer seems important, and your
whole perspective on the world changes; at least this was my experience.
Finding out the news about my cousin changed my whole outlook on life and
forced me to reexamine my life, but when I looked around I didn’t like what I
saw. I looked at the cross that I had been carrying and suddenly it seemed a
lot bigger than it ever was before. I looked at my cross and I didn’t just feel
like I was just dealing with the news regarding my cousin or my fibromyalgia,
suddenly I started noticing other things on my cross that I hadn’t realized
were there before, things I never knew affected me and things from my past that
I thought I had resolved, but actually never had. When I found out about my
cousin it was almost as if the world grabbed me and slammed me across the floor
and broke me into a bunch of different pieces. At first glance I felt like I
was broken into a 50 piece puzzle, and then something would happen and I’d feel
like I was a 1500 piece puzzle, then something else would happen and I would
think I might as well be broken into a million pieces.
I’d never felt so
broken and confused in my life, I remember thinking to myself, how did I get
here? Why am I feeling this way? I couldn’t understand how at 21 years old issues
from my childhood were starting to come up and affect me like my parents’
divorce, or insecurities I struggled with my whole life were there and I just
hadn’t noticed. Suddenly my insecurities started to surface and I no longer
felt at peace with the person that I was. I could no longer look at myself in
the mirror because I couldn’t recognize myself anymore, I didn’t know who I was
I couldn’t understand how I got to this place of brokenness and hurt, of
confusion and lack of direction. My whole world felt like it was turned upside
down and I no longer knew which was up and which way was down. It was like I
allowed myself to live in this illusion that everything in my life was fine and
I wasn’t a mess, but then reality caught up with me and I had to face the fact
that I was broken into a million pieces and I had no idea how to fix it.
I mean prior to all
this happening, I felt fine. Sure I knew I was dealing with some things, but
nothing I couldn’t handle. I knew that life had put me through the wringer at
times, but I felt like I had overcome it, and issues from my past no longer
affected me. I felt like I lived life carrying a heavy back filled with all the
burdens and hurt that I had ever experienced, but thought I had overcome and
let go. In reality rather than resolve issues from my past like my parents
divorced or insecurities that I thought I grew out of, what I really did was
place them into my backpack and forget about them. The problem is you can only
put so many things into your backpack before you can no longer fit anything
else or before the backpack breaks or explodes. This is what happened to me and
the news of my cousin was too big and heavy that when I tried to place it in my
backpack it no longer fit. Suddenly I felt like the backpack was too heavy to
carry, and too big to move. Suddenly I felt like the cross that I had been
carrying kept getting bigger and bigger and I didn’t know how to carry it
anymore.
It’s safe to say I
was a mess. I had panic attacks, I would
break down crying, I felt like I was suffocating half the time, I had no idea
what to do with myself, or how to fix things. I struggled to find joy out of
the little things in life, what use to make me happy no longer mattered and
things that were once so important to me seemed so insignificant. At the same
time I was so angry with myself, for letting things get this far, for failing
to notice just how much of a mess I was sooner. I felt like a liar, like I had
lied to myself for years about what was going on in my life and I felt ignorant
and stupid for not realizing just how broken and messed up I actually was. To
make matters worse in the midst of all of this I felt stuck. You see while all
of this was going on, I was still in school, I still had responsibilities as a
student and responsibilities around Newman, I wanted to go home to be with my
family, but every weekend there for something for me to do here and I felt like
regardless of how I felt I had to keep moving forward.
You see life doesn’t
stop just because you suffer through various trials and just like Father Bruce
said, Jesus never promised us happiness, he said “pick up your cross and follow
me” I couldn’t stop following Jesus or living my life just because I was going
through a hard time, I had to keep moving forward, I had to keep following
Jesus and no matter how big I felt my cross was, I still had to pick it up move
forward. I believe that when Jesus said pick up your cross and follow me, he
meant bring everything you have and place it at the altar, take your pain and
suffering and hurt and give it to me. I also think that picking up your cross
requires honesty, you can’t give to the altar what you don’t know you are
offering. All this time that I was living in denial, I was hindering myself
from following Jesus, from allowing him to save me and heal my heart and soul
of all the suffering and the brokenness that I was feeling. It wasn’t until I
finally accepted all the hurt and the pain and stopped lying to myself about
the issues going on in my past that I could finally hand everything over to God
and allow him to start healing me.
The breaking point
for me was one night when my roommate asked me how my day was and I broke down
crying hysterically. Telling her that nothing was ok, and I was so tired of
feeling the way that I did, and not knowing how to fix myself. After 20 minutes
of this, she stopped me and said “Stop trying to fix yourself because you
can’t. Only God can. You gotta take everything that you’re feeling and give it
to him.” After she finally calmed me down, I went to the Chapel to pray, but
when I got there I had no idea what to say or what to do. All the tears that I
had before were gone, all the words I had to share with my roommate were lost. I
tried to pray and the words just wouldn’t come. I sat there for 20 minutes
struggling to find the words, I tried kneeling, I tried sitting, I tried
pacing, but nothing worked. Finally I was so upset, I walked straight up to
Jesus nailed on the cross at the altar and I just let him have it. I remember
telling him “Why do I feel this way, why I can’t I let you in. I just can’t
take it anymore, I’m trying to give you all of this, to let you heal me, but
it’s too hard, I don’t know what to do I don’t know what to say, just take this
pain away from me, this cross is too much to bear, I don’t want it. I’m done,
just help me, why aren’t you helping me.”
Looking back now, I
don’t know what was wrong with me, I mean I was looking straight at the body of
Jesus crucified on the cross and it never even occurred to me how much he must
of suffered or how much pain he must of felt. Even on my worst day, all the
pain and the brokenness and the hurt that I felt didn’t even come close to the
pain and the suffering that he must of went through, yet I was so angry at him,
when really I had no reason to be. I should have been thanking him, but instead
I was so focused on my own cross and journey, that I forgot all about his.
I forgot that he
knew what it felt like to be hurt and broken and exhausted. I forgot that he
himself carried a cross just as I had been doing. I didn’t realize that when I
felt restless and unsure, he must have felt the same if not more. That just
like my heart broke, his did too. I forgot that even though I felt like I was
broken into a million pieces his body was literally broken and where I felt
emotionally pained, he suffered the same, not just emotionally, but physically
as well. At the same time I forgot about the promise that came with his
suffering and death, and that he paid the price so I wouldn’t have to. I forgot
that he was there for me and that he understood where I was coming from. At the
time, I didn’t realize that all of this that I was experiencing was nothing
compared to what he must have felt like when he carried his cross to his death.
I failed to see that I could look at this experience as an opportunity to ask
him for his grace and his healing and a way to somewhat understand even just a
fraction of the suffering that he endured.
At the same time I had forgotten what happened after
Christ’s death, I failed to remember that on the third day he rose again, I
failed to see that Easter was coming. I forgot that through Christ’s death we
are promised redemption, and we are never alone, that he is always with us and he’s
been through the same things that we have. I think often times when we carry
our cross and follow Jesus we often forget that we are indeed following Jesus
and that there is hope in his resurrection, that despite all the pain and the
hurt, Christ conquered death and He rose, that no matter how hard our lives may
get, were able to rise with Him, and we don’t have to carry the burden alone,
he’s there to help us, we just have to stop getting in the way of his help. We
have to allow him to heal us.
There was grace
through my frustrations and yelling at Jesus because it allowed me to be honest
with God and I was finally able to take everything I was feeling and give it to
God. The Holy Spirit was definitely with me in the Chapel because as soon as I
had reached my breaking point and I let go, I turned around and write behind
me, my favorite reading was opened on the Lectionary. James Chapter 1 says “consider
it all joy, my brothers when you encounter various trials, for you know the
testing of your faith produces perseverance. And let perseverance be perfect so
that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. But if any of you
lacks wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly,
and he will be given it. But he should ask in faith, not doubting, for the one
who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed about by the
wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the
Lord, since he is a man of two minds, unstable in all his ways.”
I read that passage
over and over again in the Chapel and things just started to click. I didn’t
feel perfect and complete, I felt broken. I didn’t ask God for help in faith,
sure I prayed, but I failed up relinquish control to Him and allow him to heal
me, I tried to put myself together, rather than let him do the work. I was
completely unstable and I felt like a wave tossed about by the wind, but the
thing is I didn’t have to do any of that. I may have felt alone, but I was
never alone, the Lord was with me all along just waiting for me to let Him in. The
night in the chapel was turning point for me, and finally I was able to let go,
and relinquish control to God.
It’s funny how much
smaller my cross seemed to feel when I started to relinquish control to God.
Sure none of my problems went away, and I was still in need for God’s mercy and
intervention, but suddenly things didn’t seem as bad as they used, and although
I still felt broken, I also knew that God would be able to put me back
together, or make something new and complete out of the mess that had become my
life. Since that night, things have slowly but surely turned around and rather
than try to deny my problems and issues, I feel like I’ve been able to work
with God and accept the issues as truth and a part of my life, I’m no longer
trying to place things in my backpack and forget about them instead I’ve been
trying to leave them at the alter and ask for God’s grace in dealing with these
things. I know that this is going to take some time, but I have faith that
Easter is coming and I know that I will find joy in persevering in these
trials.
So for all of you
tonight as you look to your own life and the crosses that you have been
carrying, I pray that you may be honest with yourself about the pain and
suffering that you have been dealing with, I pray that you may take all of it
and leave at the altar for God. It’s important that you don’t spend too much
time focusing on your own cross that you are carrying, that you forget about
the cross that Jesus carried. Remember that times of suffering and trials can
be seen as opportunities to turn to God and grow closer to Him through this
experience. Remember that Jesus understands where you are coming from and has
been there before, but most of all remember that Easter is coming and that
through Christ’s suffering and death we are offered redemption, remember that
on the third day Jesus was resurrected and we too are able to celebrate in his
Resurrection and experience newness of life in him.
