They tell the story of a boy who had an argument with his mother. Upset, he left home. He walked and walked, covering a long distance. Suddenly a big, tall wall rose up in front of him. He was so upset and angry that he started shouting at it:
“I hate you… I hate you…” And he heard a voice saying back to him: “I hate you, I hate you.”
The boy shouted again, even louder: “I hate you, I hate you…” And again he heard: “I hate you, I hate you.”
He went home sad to his mother and said: “It’s not just that I’m upset and unhappy at home; there’s also someone at the far end of the forest who hates me.” His mother was surprised: who could hate her little boy? She said: “Take me to him.” When they reached the wall, he began shouting: “I hate you… I hate you…” And again he heard: “I hate you, I hate you.” His mother said: “Sweetheart, call out to him: I love you… I love you.” The boy called out, and the answer came back: “I love you, I love you.”
My dear friends, yesterday we saw how the Lenten retreat invites us to be witnesses to the Eucharist.
Today, Friday, as you saw, we celebrated the Way of the Cross, and we will end Mass with the procession of the Cross. How can we be witnesses to the Cross? To the Cross which, despite everything, every time I come to it, tells me: “I love you… I love you.”
We are going to look at some hard faces of the Cross, through some of the stations Jesus went through before reaching Golgotha and being crucified, and read them in the light of our own lives.
1 – After Jesus was seized by the crowd of Temple guards, betrayed by Judas’s kiss, and taken to the chief priests, we see those same guards mocking him and beating him; they blindfold him and ask: “Prophesy! Who is it that struck you?” And the Gospel continues, very tragically: “And they spoke many other words against him, reviling him.” And Jesus is silent… a silence that sees, hears, suffers, loves and forgives.
This is a strong face of the Cross, one that often passes through our lives and slaps us hard on the face and head: when we are hurt from many directions, and especially by those who should be closest to us. Then sorrow, anger, tears and bitterness are born in us… We can’t always speak. We keep it in our hearts. And we ask ourselves, and we ask him: why did this happen? Why am I always the one who gets hurt? What have I done? Why always me? I, who did good to these people and to others: why did they hurt me?
The answer: there is someone on the other side, carrying the Cross, who tells me: “The same thing happened to me… and I love you. Keep loving me and carry on.”
2 – When the chief priests were with Pilate trying to persuade him to sentence Jesus to death on the cross, they began to accuse him before Pilate of things that were untrue and did not warrant such a sentence. Pilate told them: “I find no crime in this man.” And they kept insisting on his death.
Slander… a cross that hurts, that wounds to the core. How many people have lost their lives and their happiness because of slander! And harder still is gossip, that is, killing someone’s reputation, rightly or wrongly. You know the story of the woman who came to confess to the priest: “Father, I spoke badly about someone in the parish.” The priest said: “No problem. Before I give you absolution, take a chicken, kill it, and scatter its feathers along the road on your way to me.” When she got to the priest, she told him she had done what he asked and asked for absolution. He told her: “One more little thing: go and collect all those feathers and come back to me.” “But Father, they’ve blown all over the village!” He said: “Well, that person’s reputation is now on everyone’s lips: how can you give them back their dignity?!”
Jesus too is on the other side of the Cross, and he tells me: “I love you… carry on.”
3 – The evangelist says that after all this argument, “Pilate delivered Jesus up to their will.”
That sentence is terrible, my dear friends: “to their will”. How much torment, pain and injustice it holds, psychological before physical! What does “to their will” mean? That they could deal with him according to the will of their hatred, envy, rigidity, loathing, selfishness and the letter of their law… Pilate handed Jesus over to the will of their instincts.
And if we go through an experience like that… he too will be on the other side of the Cross and tell me: “I love you… carry on.”
4 – The Gospel tells us that as they were taking Jesus away to be crucified, they saw someone coming back from work who had nothing to do with any of what was happening, a man named Simon of Cyrene, and they forced him to carry the cross with Jesus.
Ugh… why do I always have to be the good one? Why am I the one expected to take care of things, to pay, to welcome people and to sacrifice? Why don’t they ever think of doing it? That’s it, I’m tired… I can’t take any more… it’s too much.
There is someone on the other side of the Cross who smiles and tells me: “I love you, and carry on.”
5 – Finally, after everything that happened to Jesus – insults, contempt, scourging, a crown of thorns pressed into his head, nails in his hands and feet, thirst, isolation, loneliness and then death – the centurion, who had witnessed every stage of his “Way of the Cross”, will kneel and cry out from the depths of his being: “Truly this man was the Son of God!”
The Cross is all these situations and many other hard situations that sometimes have no solution or answer. But there is certainly someone standing on the other side, telling me: “I love you.”
And finally, let us not forget that the Cross is a smile, it is acceptance, it is conviction, it is ambition, it is striving for change, it is perseverance, it is attentiveness, it is connection; it is to keep loving, praying, sharing and laughing despite everything… and to kneel in silence before him and try to say like him: “Father, forgive them… because I love you.”
Fr. Joseph Abi Aoun
