Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.
2 Corinthians 12:10 (MSG)4. Narrative
Fr Thom Miller sermon during Mass at St. Susana Church 2/29/2024.
Depth from Crucifixion and Failures
If we look at our lives and ask ourselves what has made us deep? What has helped us to understand the deeper things in life? If we are honest, we will have to admit that what made us deep we're not our successes or achievements. These brought us glory but not depth or character.
What brought us depth and character are the very things we
are often ashamed to talk about, namely our inferiorities - getting picked last
on the school team, being bullied on the playground, some physical inadequacy,
our mother's weight problem, our dad's
alcoholism, an abuse inflicted upon us
that we were so powerless to stop, a
slow-wittedness the perpetually left us out of the inner circle, our failure to achieve what we'd like to in
life, a pain about our sexual
orientation, an addiction we can't
master, and many, many other small and
big wounds and bruises that helped shape our soul.
Depth never comes out
of our successes but only out of our inferiorities and failures. And these, our scars, give us character. Our souls are like huge stones in the riverbed;
they may do nothing but stay still and held their ground but the river has to
take them into account and alter its flow because of them and it's precisely
this which gives the river (and a face) some character.
This truth lies at the very heart of Jesus’ life and message. When
the disciples can't fathom or accept the crucifixion, he asked them: “Wasn't it
necessary?” Isn't there a necessary
connection between the humiliation of Good Friday and the glory of Easter
Sunday? Isn't there an intrinsic
connection between going through a certain kind of suffering and reaching a
certain kind of depth?
Indeed, Jesus struggled in the garden of Gethsemane, his
asking God three times to spare him from the pain and humiliation of being
crucified, was precisely his own reluctance to accept that a certain kind of depth
can only be arrived at by journeying through a certain kind of humiliation. And in
his case, he wasn't just going to be picked on by the playground bully, he was
going to be hung naked before the whole world. But that was the only route to Easter Sunday,
and he had the moral intelligence to see it.
And what the crucifixion produced is moral wisdom. That's why the cross of Christ is the single
most revolutionary moral event that has ever happened on this planet. What
the cross of Christ does, is rip away the veil the separate us from seeing
inside the holy of holies.
And our own crosses and humiliations can do that for us too. They
can rip away a blindness and wake us up moral.
Awake. Ready. Christ like.
5. Meditation
https://youtu.be/Unbi1YfQfBU?si=6H0aOMgpFRTikJBu
6. Sharing
7. Prayer and Intention
The scars of worry, guilt, shame, rejection, and loneliness … help us love hurting people in a broken world. God can help us use our flaws and scars to love the people around us who are struggling and in pain. Not on our own. Well, at least not on my own… But with God’s grace.
8. Song
https://youtu.be/kZBudCYndA0?si=L5E0gs07Xg6_R-W-
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