OUR CROSSES
The veneration of the Cross on Good Friday is something I always look forward to. I love the quiet, the calm, of Good Friday. The wood of the Cross, on which is hung our salvation, is tangible and solid. It feels rooted and solid in tradition as well. I love the Triduum liturgies. As we do our “at home” versions, as we engage with other prayers like the Liturgy of the Hours, and participate via online liturgies, this year is different for me in so many ways.
I keep thinking of Poe’s “The Masque of the Red Death” this week as the creeping pandemic comes closer and closer to home. It started as numbers, vague numbers, and “vulnerable persons” (kids don’t get it they said, it’s really just elderly patients they said). Then it was particular cities, this or that person who I didn’t know dying. More numbers, more profiles. And now the turn. It’s people I know talking about people they are losing. People with lives that are just a degree of separation away from mine. I’m scared of when and if it will come into my “house.” In contrast to Poe’s Prospero, I’m not walling myself off with others trying to flee it. I’m trying to seek solidarity with the wider society, to give each other physical space because of great concern for them, rather than from a lack.
This has me thinking as I prepare to venerate the Cross in some time of prayer with my family in my home for Good Friday. I think both of the reassuring solidness of the Cross and the vulnerability I feel. I recall that I have to pass through what that Cross represents - self-emptying, pain, "death" - in order to roll away the stones in my own life. I remember, “Wait, I don’t love crosses.” Crosses hurt. I’m ashamed and fearful that my failings will bring rejection and judgment. I want to run from the fear of rejection and have fear silenced by affirmation. But if I can’t sit with it, hold onto it, then I can’t let it teach me, and I can’t meet Jesus in it. To venerate my own crosses, to let my salvation hang on them, to find Jesus hiding in them, is the task I feel prodded toward this year.
Fr. Tri once challenged me to ask Jesus when I am caught in a cycle of self-judgment: “I’m doing it again. Lord, do you still love me?” When I ask this, do I feel (do you feel) there is a chance he’ll say no?
Jason Coito