+ We take another look at the cross today, the day following the great Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.
But today’s look is through the eyes of a sorrowful mother — the mother of Jesus.
First, we listen to Paul, a changed man.
He writes this letter to Timothy: a companion of his missionary journeys.
This, one of his three letters called the “Pastoral Letters,” is an urgent letter to urge fidelity to true teaching and not false, gnostic stuff.
And so Paul, in total honesty and humility, admits when he was standing in falsehood. He notes: “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and an arrogant man” who “acted out of ignorance in my unbelief.”
Not everyone is able to admit their past, especially the ugly and rough edges of a past.
But Paul was saved by grace — amazing grace.
And it was an important part of his story and a part that could continue to save and reach others from perhaps walking the same path as he once did.
His honesty about his past was part of his great joy, for he could point directly to the love that the risen Christ had for him.
And that love saved him from himself, and the very reason for his love for Timothy and his other companions who as a result walked with Christ and preached the Lord.
+ In a very powerful and loving moment, we listen to Jesus speak from the cross in John‘s Gospel.
He sees his brokenhearted mother standing by his side helpless and full of sorrow.
In a most tender and merciful and, in a sense, a pastoring way, Jesus reaches out to his mother and to John whom he truly loved, and verbalizes their future and their mutual care for one another: “Woman, behold your Son.”
Then to Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross.: “Behold your mother.”
In Jesus’ most painful and rejected moment in his 33 years, he reached out to help others.
The cross not only did not prevent him, but rather enabled him to love, forgive, and help others.
He showed the way for others to live in love for one another and through that love to find healing and peace.
The sorrowful mother was embraced by arms that could not physically embrace because those arms were nailed to a cross — but embrace they did!
Like all the Gospel stories, this story is ours, too.
In a thoroughly noble way, Jesus the Christ gives us to one another as a church.
Called into community, we become so united that Paul refers to us as “the body of Christ.”
It is truly as if from that cross, Jesus is saying to us: “Behold your brother. Behold you sister.”
He gives us the way to live and love.
He verbalizes for us our future and mutual care for one another.
And like Paul, we, too, become aware of God’s amazing grace in our lives.
Father Perry D. Leiker is the 13th pastor of St. Bernard Catholic Church. Reach him at (323) 255-6142. Email Father Perry at pleiker@stbernard-church.com.
