Bear With Us

The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery

Bearing the Cross

Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John

“If anyone wants to be a follow/er of mine

           Let him re/nounce himself

“And take up his cross e/very day

           And / follow Me.”

And He carried / His own Cross

           As they led Him out to cru/cify Him.

And they seized a man, Simon / from Cyrene

           And made him shoulder it and carry it be/hind Jesus.

“Shoul/der My yoke

           And / learn from Me.

“For / I am gentle

           And hum/ble in heart.

“And you will find rest / for your souls

           Yes, my yoke is easy and My / burden light.”

Large numbers of people / followed Him

           And of women too, who mourned and lament/ed for Him.

But Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not / weep for Me;

           Weep rather for yourselves and / for your children.

“For if men use the green / wood like this

           What will happen when / it is dry?”

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the / Holy Spirit,

           As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world / without end.

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

The Fourth Sorrowful Mystery is the Bearing of the Cross. Meditation upon this subject is intended to instill within us patience, especially in the midst of hardship.

In many ways Lent used to be a lot harder than it is. Faithful Christians had to adhere to a rigorous fast of no more than one meal each day, and that meal was to be devoid of any flesh, gravy, dairy, oil, eggs, or, presumably, fun. What would that be like—one flavorless serving of flour paste or vegetables each day, for 40 days straight? Thankfully Sundays were exempt, and one could generally drink as much beer as desired. But still, how did they do it?

When it came to fasting, our forebears were simply tougher than we are, plain and simple. They weren’t used to three square meals a day. They certainly didn’t expect flesh meats at every sitting. For them, the strict Lenten fast was less of a departure from the norm and more like everyday life. As time went by, restrictions have loosened, and loosened, and loosened again. Eggs and oil and dairy were permitted. You could drink milk and juice whenever you liked. Even little snacks, fancifully called “collations,” were allowed. Nowadays even the strictest Catholics only fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, and Fridays in Lent remain meat-free. Most Protestants give up some luxury such as chocolate. We are not used to privation of any sort, so it is more difficult for us.

It seems that patience is also something that was easier for previous generations to bear. It used to be that penance for great sins could last for days, weeks, even years. Now we forgive and wave all but the lightest of penalties. I’m relieved at this, myself, for I’ve read the old medieval penance manuals, and I’m pretty sure that I’d be doing hard penance for life to correct for some of my past transgressions. But whereas fasting was easier in the past because folks had it rougher, I think that patience is harder now because we have it rougher (spiritually, at least). We are distracted in ways that previous generations would find bewildering, even crippling. We generally live longer than medieval Christians, but we also live so much faster.

When it came to existential matters—will we have enough to eat, will the plague strike, will bandits raid?—obviously their concerns were weightier than ours. But we are bombarded with myriad tiny stresses unheard of before our own day. If they feared the wolf’s jaws, we fear death by a thousand paper cuts. We do not have the comforts of immediate purpose, of a deep relationship with nature, of only concerning oneself with stuff that actually matters. We are far safer than any previous generation but it seems we are simultaneously far more stressed. That makes it hard to be patient. That makes it hard to wait. Too much is happening all around us. Too much is rushing past when we try to sit still. (I am reminded of this whenever I go shopping online at Amazon. For me, “patience” might consist of relegating some book to my wish list so as to force myself to wait a few days before buying it.)

To meditate upon Christ bearing the Cross is to re-center ourselves around actual and weighty concerns, and to drive out the petty distractions and stresses of everyday life. We look to how He suffered, at our hands and for our fate—suffered so much because He knew that in so doing He accomplished the salvific purposes of God. We look to His patience, how He waited 30 years to begin His earthly ministry, and another three to inaugurate His Kingdom, and we are reminded at how, time and again, the people of God are called upon to wait in silence for His promises. Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, John the Baptist—men and women of faith waited patiently for God over the course of years, of decades, even of centuries before He worked to fulfill His promises in their sight. Israel waited thousands of years for the Messiah. The Church is waiting thousands of years for His return.

God, I’m afraid, is no genie, popping up to grant wishes whenever we demand them. Time works differently for Him—after all, He invented it. To be patient, to wait for God and to trust that He will act in just the right way at just the right time, even if we must suffer as we endure—why, that is an act of deepest faith. Abraham trusted in God’s promise that he would have a son, even as he aged 100 years, even when he thought he might have to kill his only beloved child. Israel trusted in God’s promise of liberation after 400 years of slavery in Egypt and another 40 of wandering in the desert. The rabbis trusted God’s prophecies through Daniel regarding the Christ for some half a millennium after they were first uttered. When we wait patiently for God, we are never disappointed, even if we have to wait a lifetime—even if we have to wait for generation upon generation. We suffer patiently, knowing that to do so is an act of faith, some small way that we can honor and proclaim the steadfastness, the trustworthiness, of our God.

When we suffer, God draws nearer. When we wait, He is with us already. This is a great and beautiful paradox.

At the beginning of this reflection, I mused about how previous generations had greater fortitude but how, spiritually speaking, we live in more difficult times. I think this to be true. But the era in which we live cannot be our excuse. True patience has little to do with external stresses and far more to do with inner trust and peace. Yet even as we strive to be patient in waiting for God, we must remind ourselves that God is being patient with us.

Through Word and through Sacrament, you and I have been made members of the Church, the Body of Christ. We are the continuation of God made flesh, the hands and feet that Jesus has chosen for His own, to carry out His mission in this world. So the question of waiting gets turned around on us. It becomes not “What is God waiting for?” but rather, “What are we waiting for?” You and I, after all, are His answer to prayer.

Sometimes we must wait for God to act; we must be patient, trusting in His promises and in His wisdom. But there are many times when we must realize that it is God Who is waiting for us to act, for He has equipped His children to fulfill His purposes.

Lord, grant us the serenity to accept what we cannot change, the courage to change what we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. In Jesus’ Name. AMEN.