Dear Friends,
All of our registered parishioners should have received the parish Annual Report in the mail this week. If you did not receive one, you may not be registered or we may have the wrong address for you. There are extra copies of the annual report at the entry ways to the church. I hope that the report is both a celebration of the past year and an explanation of how parish leadership chose to use your donations. If you want a more specific financial report, please contact Jan Bode in the parish office and she can get you one.
I have had a bad cold this week, so I am going to let Pope Francis give you the weekly reflection. He gave this talk in Slovakia this past week on the feast of the Triumph of the Cross.
“We – declares St. Paul – proclaim Christ crucified…, the power of God and the wisdom of God”. On the other hand, the Apostle does not hide that the cross, in the eyes of human wisdom, represents something quite different: it is “scandal”, “foolishness”. The cross was an instrument of death, yet life came from there. It was what no one wanted to look at, yet it revealed to us the beauty of God’s love. This is why the holy People of God venerate it and the Liturgy celebrates it on today’s feast. The Gospel of St. John takes us by the hand and helps us to enter into this mystery. The evangelist, in fact, was right there, under the cross. He contemplates Jesus, already dead, hanging from the wood, and writes: “He who has seen bears witness”.
First of all, there is seeing. But what did John see under the cross? Certainly, what the others saw: Jesus, innocent and good, brutally dies between two criminals. One of the many injustices, one of the many bloody sacrifices that do not change history, yet another demonstration that the course of events in the world does not change: the good are removed and the wicked win and prosper. In the eyes of the world, the cross is a failure. And we too run the risk of stopping at this first superficial glance, of not accepting the logic of the cross; do not accept that God saves us by letting the evil of the world unleash upon us. Do not accept, except in words, the weak and crucified God, and dream of a strong and triumphant god. It is a great temptation. How many times do we aspire to a Christianity as winners, to a triumphalistic Christianity, that it has relevance and importance, that it receives glory and honor. But a Christianity without a cross is worldly and becomes sterile.
San Giovanni, on the other hand, saw in the cross the work of God. He recognized the glory of God in Christ crucified. He saw that, despite appearances, he is not a loser, but it is God who voluntarily offers himself for every man. Why did he do it? He could have spared his life, he could have kept his distance from our most miserable and raw history. Instead he wanted to enter it, immerse himself in it. For this he chose the most difficult way: the cross. Because there must be no person on Earth so desperate as not to be able to meet him, even there, in anguish, in darkness, in abandonment, in the scandal of his own misery and mistakes. Right there, where it is thought that God cannot exist, God has come. To save anyone who is desperate, he wanted to lick despair, to make our most bitter despair his own he cried out on the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”. A cry that saves. Saves because God has made even our abandonment his own. And we, now, with him, are no longer alone, never.
How can we learn to see the glory on the cross? Some saints have taught that the cross is like a book that, in order to know it, one must open and read. It is not enough to buy a book, take a look at it and put it on display at home. The same goes for the cross: it is painted or carved in every corner of our churches. There are countless crucifixes: around the neck, at home, in the car, in your pocket. But it is useless if we do not stop to look at the Crucifix and we do not open our hearts to him, if we do not let ourselves be amazed by his wounds open for us, if the heart does not swell with emotion and we do not cry before God who is wounded by love for us. If we do not do this, the cross remains an unread book, whose title and author are well known, but which does not affect life. Let us not reduce the cross to an object of devotion.
From contemplating the Crucifix comes the second step: witnessing. If you immerse your gaze in Jesus, his face begins to reflect on ours: his features become ours, the love of Christ conquers and transforms us. I think of the martyrs…A testimony made out of love for the One they had long contemplated. Enough to resemble him, even in death…The witness of the cross pursues only one strategy, that of the Master: humble love. He does not expect triumphs here below, because he knows that Christ’s love is fruitful in everyday life and makes all things new from within, like a seed that has fallen into the earth, which dies and produces fruit…This is how faith spreads: not with the power of the world, but with the wisdom of the cross; not with structures, but with testimony. And today the Lord, from the vibrant silence of the cross, asks all of us, also asks you, you, you, me: “Do you want to be my witness?”.
Peace,
Fr. Damian
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