This reflection was prepared a while ago. As I reread it today, in the context of our current lockdown, the question comes to mind: “How can I proclaim this to those most in need today?”
Firstly, by spending time meditating on this reality myself and making it more alive in me as a life-giving focus in these times of fear and uncertainty.
Then it will overflow to those I reach out to, in my home, and through my use of social media to reach out to others.
St Eugene’s Good Friday experience of the Savior brought light and focus into his life:
What more glorious occupation than to act in everything and for everything only for God, to love him above all else, to love him all the more as one who has loved him too late
Eugene de Mazenod, Retreat Journal, December 1814, EO XV n.130
“The word ‘Oblates’ means people ready to give themselves for the love of God. God’s Spirit has granted St. Eugene and his sons and daughters the zeal to get caught up by the mystery of the saving cross and to proclaim it to those most in need. Our spirituality is therefore centered on the salvation given us by Christ; it can be called ‘salvatorian’. With such a spiritual orientation our Congregation was approved in 1826.
Our recognition by the Church, which we celebrate each February 17th calls us to delve deeper into the mystery of salvation, to make it even more the center of our lives, as it was the center around which Eugene’s life revolved.”
Steckling OMI, OMI Information n 462, Rome, February 2007.
Goodness always tends to spread. Every authentic experience of truth and goodness seeks by its very nature to grow within us, and any person who has experienced a profound liberation becomes more sensitive to the needs of others. As it expands, goodness takes root and develops. If we wish to lead a dignified and fulfilling life, we have to reach out to others and seek their good. In this regard, several sayings of Saint Paul will not surprise us: “The love of Christ urges us on” (2 Cor 5:14); “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel” (1 Cor 9:16). Pope Francis, The Joy of the Gospel, 9.
There is something different this morning as I sit with all of you. At the beginning of the pandemic I found myself looking at all the things that I could not do; if I could not meet with those I love dearly; if my daily bread became non-physical bread, if there was no gathering in a church, no hugging or touching… What would it look like to join Jesus on the journey to Calvary?
There is forming within me an image of Mary at the foot of the Cross – just that ‘standing at the foot of the cross’. As I allow myself to sit with these thoughts something deep within me breaks, opening my heart and I find myself crying softly, silently. This Good Friday, unable to physically serve and help lead others to experience the Cross I will experience it in a new way, or perhaps more correctly, a deeper way. Where will I be, how will I be able to share in the vigil without being with others? How will experience the Vigil and find Jesus in the Garden, resurrected. How will I join him in that?
I hear a small, familiar voice: “hush. I will lead you, I will hold you, carry you. Be with me.”
I remember my experience of holding Jesus, kissing his wounds and having to ‘give Him back to the Cross’ and I think of Jesus in the garden with Mary and him telling her to wait for he had not yet been to the father.
It is as if I open my eyes and I see with me millions of people; mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, teachers, government offices, priests – people of every walk of life – altogether there waiting and keeping vigil.
I am suddenly fearful of my own experience. I do not know where these thoughts come from – they simply arise within me. I do not want to hide them away and pretend that they are not there; all that I can do is to share them. Will I be jeered at, scorned as I join with others at the foot of the Cross? The what-ifs loom largely ahead of me. I will carry them with me at the foot of the Cross as I wait to be picked up and join my Beloved on that cross.
I again read the words of Pope Francis; could this be a part of the Joy of the Gospel.