August 30

This weekend, we hear a lot about carrying our cross. How often do we reduce this phrase to its lowest possible meaning?

“I can’t go out in the sun without burning. It’s just my cross.”

“I’m lactose intolerant. Is my cross to bear.”

“I hate masks, but if Father Jess wants me to, I’ll carry my cross.”

Listen. When Jesus said this, the disciples weren’t thinking about bad skin, bad gas, or bad breath. They were thinking about one of the most gruesome forms of capital punishment used at the time and they had to truly love Jesus on an astonishing level to be willing to “carry their cross.” And so do we.

It helps that Jesus first showed his love for us. After all, he must truly love us on an astonishing level to be willing to carry his cross.

St. Augustine said, “No command is hard and heavy when it comes from one who helps to carry it out.”

As Dr. Brant Pitre explains, “Although the command seems hard, when it is animated by love, it actually becomes easy, because the grace of Christ enables us to willingly choose the cross for love of God and for love of neighbor.

So what is your greatest cross? Your biggest struggle? The heartbreak so intense that you felt it rewire your brain and your heart? What is the great shame or pain of your life?

St. Josemaria Escriva gives counsel on how we proceed with THIS cross: “Don’t drag the cross… Carry it squarely on your shoulders, because your cross, if you carry it so, will not just be any cross… It will be the holy cross.”

That, my friends, is uniting your suffering with Christ’s.

Questions? Comments? Email David at dlins@oloj.org.