Saturday in the Second Week of Lent - 2012

A thought for your reflection during this season of Lent.  Yesterday, while leading the Stations of the Cross, the phrase, "the heavy cross," seemed to grab my mind.  It appeared in the words of many of the stations.  Eventually my mind became focused on the phrase.  Why?  There is a fireplace in The Hermitage, the residence where I live.  I have always loved a fireplace.  A great place to reflect on whatever I like to allow some freedom in the hallways of my mind.  What I began to think about during the stations was the word "heavy."  I have a pile of cut logs in the garage.  Usually I carry five or six logs to the fireplace, using a flight of stairs from the basement to the living room.  I thought about the weight  of those five or six cut logs.

What an oppressive load on the beaten body of Jesus as he made his climb to Calvary!  I had never thought about that aspect of the "Way of the Cross." the weight of the cross!  Without having endure the soldiers' lashes, the piercing pain of the crown of thorns and the many times soldiers roughly pushed the man carrying the cross, imagine how painful the journey would have been.  Then add all of these tortures.

What should I think?  Should I allow sorrow to take over in my heart?  Not for me.  Rather, I felt a deep sense of gratitude.  This is the intensity of God's love for me:  the Father sending his Son to carry every ounce of my sins; the Son bearing all of my failings to the top of the hill cloaked in torture.

Every time I look at a pile of logs, every time I carry several to the fireplace, I know now what really should enter my mind:  Jesus, Son of God, you carried the weight of my sins, my failures.  Deo Gratias!