Thomas a Kempis on the Cross

"Renounce yourself, take up your cross and follow Jesus." There are many to whom that seems a hard saying; but how much harder will it be to hear that word of final judgment: Go far from me, you that are accursed, into eternal fire. Those who now gladly hear the word of the cross and keep what it commands will not be afraid then when they hear the doom of everlasting loss. It is this sign of the cross that will appear in the sky when the Lord comes to judge us. Then all the servants of the cross, who during their lifetime made the Crucified the pattern of their deeds, will come with great confidence before Christ who is to judge them.

Why then are you afraid to take up your cross? It is your road to the kingdom of Christ. In the cross lies our salvation, our life; in the cross we have defense against our foes. In the cross we have a pouring-in of heavenly sweetness, a strengthening of our minds and spiritual joy. In the cross is the peak of virtue, the perfection of holiness. There is no salvation for our souls, no hope of life everlasting, but in the cross. Take up your cross then, and follow Jesus; and you will go into life that has no end. He has gone ahead of you, bearing his own cross; on that cross he has died for you, that you may bear your own cross and on that cross yearn to die. If you have died together with him, together with him you will have life; if you have shared his suffering you will also share his glory.

From The Imitation of Christ

Jesus and His Cross

There is a saying: "Don't seek Christ without his cross. You might find a cross without Christ."

Jesus cannot be separated from his cross. The whole purpose of his life was to bring us back to God through his death on the cross. The cross is the fulfillment of Jesus' mission on earth and the realization of God's promises. Without the cross, Jesus is just another good man who said some nice things but who has no power to forgive sins. With the cross, Jesus is the Savior of the World holding out to us the promise of everlasting life.

Jesus makes this very clear to his disciples. To save the world, he will have to be rejected, will have to suffer and will have to die. In so doing, Jesus will take upon himself the punishment we deserve for our sins.

Peter, however, would have none of it. He didn't want to hear that Jesus, whom he loved dearly, will have to suffer. I have no doubt that Peter would gladly have suffered and died for Jesus. But it is often more painful for us to see the suffering of those we love than to go through the suffering ourselves. Peter loved Jesus so much that he couldn't bear the thought of him suffering and dying. And so he cried out: "God forbid that any such thing happen to you!" However, Jesus rebuked Peter in the strongest possible terms, going so far as to call him "Satan". For Jesus, there was no other way for him to save the world and gain for us the forgiveness of our sins except by embracing the suffering of the cross.

Peter did what we are so often tempted to do. He tried to separate Jesus from his cross.

If Jesus and his cross come as a package, then we cannot welcome Jesus into our lives without also welcoming his cross. We cannot follow Jesus without picking up our own cross. We cannot love Jesus without also loving the cross.

Each of us has a different cross to bear. For some, it is illness. For others, it is financial hardship. Most of us struggle under the weight of a cross made up of many smaller crosses. Whatever form it may take, we can often stumble under its weight. We can feel alone and isolated because of the pain we feel. We can become bitter and let suffering harden us and close us off from others.

But, when we welcome Jesus into our lives and choose to live as his disciples, our cross is transformed from a burden into a source of life and even joy. We begin to experience that we are not alone in our pain, but that Jesus is carrying our cross with us. Our suffering no longer closes us off from others, but helps us to become more sensitive to the pain that others experience in their lives. And, instead of making us bitter, our pain begins to open our heart to the love and mercy of Jesus. We even begin to inspire others by persevering through difficulty. Suffering, then, takes on a whole new meaning in our lives. We begin to love the cross because it is the means by which we come to know Jesus in a profound and personal way.

We can begin to experience the transforming power of the cross in our lives by following the advice many of us received from our parents whenever we complained about something - by "offering it up". It is as simple as saying, "Jesus, I offer this suffering up to you for my sins and for the sins of the world." Or, "Jesus, I offer this pain to you for my friend who is also in pain." We can offer up our suffering for our own sins, for the souls in purgatory or for others who are also suffering. When we offer up to Jesus whatever difficulties, inconveniences and hardships we experience, they are transformed from sources of anger and frustration into opportunities to give Jesus more of our heart and more of our lives. Eventually, we even become grateful for the struggles we encounter in our daily life because they bring us closer to Jesus. We come to love the cross because we understand that it is the way to Jesus.

There is a still deeper meaning of the cross in our lives. If we decide to live according to the gospel message, we are going to experience difficulties. We are going to be ridiculed for our beliefs which seem out of touch to many people. We are going to be rejected by our friends, co-workers and classmates because we live differently than they do. We are going to be accused of being close-minded and judgmental. We are going to feel left out of the crowd. It is the same rejection and ridicule that Jesus experienced in his life. When we have the courage to stand up for what we believe, to go out of our way to help the poor and the needy and to defend the rights of the weak against the powerful, we will know the real power of the cross not only to transform us but to transform the world.

Jesus cannot be separated from his cross. But, just as importantly, the cross cannot be separated from the Resurrection! The power of the cross comes from the fact that it leads us to the Resurrection. The Resurrection is Jesus' victory over sin and death. It is the Resurrection that we celebrate when we gather every Sunday. We come to this place with our cross on our shoulders to proclaim boldly that there is no suffering, no persecution, no difficulty which God cannot transform. And, we reaffirm our commitment to embrace the cross by overcoming evil with good through the power that Jesus gives us in his Body and Blood.

No Matter What You Say..."I AM"

With politicians positioning themselves to run for president in the coming year, the media will treat us to a steady diet of daily polls. The latest Rasmussen poll, Gallup poll, ABC News poll, or Zogby poll will be leading the evening news informing us about the opinions of the American public, especially about who should be president. And, it will all be broken down by race, by economic status and by age. We will learn which candidate middle class voters prefer, which candidate young voters prefer and who has the best chance of winning the so-called "swing states". When election day is finally over, the polling will still go on. We'll learn from the pollsters why people voted the way they did and how happy they were with their choice. Chances are most of us will never get a call from a pollster, but somehow they manage to figure out what we think and how we'll vote.

In today's gospel reading, Jesus takes a poll of his disciples. He wants to know what the people are saying about him, who they say he is. He wants to know if the authority of his teaching and the power of his miracles had convinced the people that he was the Messiah. But, from what the disciples could tell him, the people believed that he was no more than a prophet, no greater than Elijah, Jeremiah or John the Baptist.

Then, Jesus shocks them by turning the question on them: "Who do YOU say that I am?" We can imagine that some of the disciples were taken off guard and may have hung their heads, avoiding eye contact with Jesus because they weren't quite sure how to answer. It may have hurt Jesus to see many of his disciples not able to understand yet who he was. But, Simon, son of John, does not miss a beat. He boldly stands up and answers Jesus in front of everyone: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!" Simon Peter's profession of faith is bold because not only does he recognize Jesus to be the Messiah, the one who would save Israel, but because he also recognizes Jesus to be God himself - God made man.

Jesus, for his part, recognizes that Simon Peter's profession of faith was not something he had thought up on his own. It wasn't a result of Peter's thinking through the evidence and coming to a rational conclusion about who Jesus was. Rather, Jesus recognizes that Peter's profession of faith was a gift from God. God himself revealed to Peter who Jesus was: the Messiah and the Son of the Living God.

We wouldn't need to take a poll to tell us who the world thinks Jesus is. To the world, Jesus is just another good man. He is just another voice in the history of humanity, no different than Confucius, Mohammad or maybe even Nostradamus. In the world's eyes, it doesn't really matter if you believe in Jesus or believe in something or someone else. As they say, "It's all good." If you decide that Jesus isn't the one for you, you can find salvation somewhere else. To the world, it's all relative.

We know well what the world says about Jesus. But, the gospel turns the question on us. Who do WE say Jesus is? Who do I say Jesus is? Who do YOU say Jesus is? Is Jesus just another voice among many others throughout history; or, is Jesus THE voice of God the Father? Is Jesus just one way to salvation and everlasting life; or is Jesus THE way, the only way? Do we pick and choose the teachings of Jesus which we understand and agree with and ignore the rest; or do we believe that every word Jesus speaks is THE word of God which we must struggle to understand, to accept and to obey? And, do we believe that the Church Jesus built on Peter's profession of faith is necessary for our salvation; or do we think we can do it on our own.

What separated the disciples from the crowds of people who were merely interested in Jesus was ultimately the belief in Jesus as the Savior and the Son of God. What separates us from the world is the belief that Jesus is the only way to the Father, the only way to salvation and the only way to everlasting life. Like Simon Peter, our belief is a gift from the Father, a gift of faith. It was first given to us in our baptism and strengthened by our confirmation. It continues to be nourished through the Eucharist. Our faith is a precious gift because it makes our Lord and Savior Jesus alive in our hearts and active in our lives.

In his book, Mere Christianity, the great Christian author, C.S. Lewis writes that when it comes to Jesus there can be no middle ground. If Jesus is God as he claimed to be, then we must believe everything he said and obey everything he commanded us to do since it all comes from God himself. If Jesus is not God, then he is a blasphemer and a lunatic whom we must reject altogether. The gospel calls us to a decision today. If we believe that Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of God, will we love him with all our heart, all our mind and all our strength? Will we commit our lives to him and live as he commanded?

As we approach the body and blood of Christ in this Mass today, let us join with Saint Peter in professing our faith and reaffirming our commitment to Jesus by saying: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!"

Sunset in Provincetown -an artist's portrait

A Mother's Prayer

When it comes to what's best for their children, mothers never take "no" for an answer.

A case in point is today's gospel. The Canaanite woman is literally begging Jesus to cure her daughter who is tormented by a demon. Though the gospel doesn't tell us anything else about the girl's affliction, we can imagine that she was in a great deal of pain.

Though Jesus appears to be ignoring her, she persists in begging for him to help her. It gets to the point where the disciples are starting to get annoyed and want Jesus to tell her to leave them alone.

After talking to the woman, Jesus surprisingly refuses to help her because she is not Jewish. But, she will still not give up until Jesus, recognizing her faith, grants her request to relieve her daughter of her affliction. The woman's great persistence was a reflection of the depth of her faith - a depth of faith which Jesus could not ignore.

Now, it may shock us to think that Jesus would be capable of ignoring a woman in such obvious distress. It goes against the compassionate image of Jesus that we so often encounter in the gospels. Could it be that Jesus was really not going to help her? Could it be that Jesus was really willing to allow her daughter to continue suffering just because she belonged to another race and another religion than he?

On the contrary, I believe that Jesus pretended to ignore the woman to teach a lesson to his disciples who were with him that day and to us who hear this gospel proclaimed today. Jesus must have sensed the woman's distress and seen the faith in her heart. Jesus somehow knew she wouldn't take "no" for an answer and that she wouldn't give up. By forcing the woman to pursue him, he wanted to teach us about the need to persevere in prayer, to not give up even though it seems that our prayers will never be answered and our needs will never be met.

The history of the Church is full of stories of mothers who, like the woman in the gospel, persevered in praying for their children over many years. One of the most moving stories is that of Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine. Saint Augustine, though a bright young man, lived many years of his life without direction. He was seeking happiness and peace, but didn't know where to find it. His mother, Monica, prayed for him consistently as he looked into different philosophies and different ways of life all looking for the joy and peace his mother knew he would only find through faith in Jesus. Eventually, after many years of intercession, Monica finally saw her prayers answered when Augustine embraced the gift of faith and turned his life over to Jesus. He was ordained a bishop and became known for his powerful sermons and writings, becoming one of the Church's greatest saints.

The prayer of mothers is very powerful indeed, because it is motivated by deep love and faith. Many of us can point to the prayers and examples of our own mothers and grandmothers as reasons why we came to take our faith seriously. And, I can attest that mothers are in this church daily on their knees in prayer for their children who may be having difficulties in school, fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan, having difficulties in their marriage or struggling with illness. Thankfully, mothers never give up in their prayers for us and for the world.

This past week, we celebrated the feast of the great Mother of the Church, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Like a good mother, she never ceases to bring our prayers to her son for us. No matter what we may need and no matter how long it may take, a devotion to the Mother of God assures us that Jesus will hear and answer our prayers.

Our families, our Church and our world have many needs. There is much pain and suffering everywhere we look. With the love and faith we find in our mothers, we must never give up in bringing our prayers to Jesus. If Jesus delays in answering us, then we must pray even harder. Jesus hears us, and Jesus sees the faith in our hearts. Jesus will answer eventually if we do not let up. We can be especially assured that he will answer if we enlist his mother, Mary, as our ally.

Be With Us, Lord

My wife wrote this beautiful prayer for a meeting she was attended. I wanted to share it with you.



Dear Lord,
Be with us here tonight.
Be with us in our desire to serve you in others.
Be with us in our efforts to spread your word.
Be with us in our struggle to build community.
Be with us in our confusion as we seek to know your will.
Be with us in our impatience to see our efforts bear fruit.
Be with us as we bear with each others faults and weaknesses.
Be with us as we strive to use wisely all you have given us.
Be with us as we look to the future with faith and hope.
Be with us and teach us that our greatest joy is to be with you
Who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.

Cape Cod National Sea Shore

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the declaration of the Cape Cod National Seashore. To celebrate it, my family and I took a tour of the dunes around Provincetown. The following are pictures we took during that tour.

God is Greater!

A woman was widowed at a young age and left with three young children to raise. As you can imagine, she struggled through many long days and lonely nights worrying about how she would pay her bills and build character in her children. Sympathizing with her, a friend gave her a magnet for her refrigerator which simply said, "God is greater than..." After the "than", there was a blank line to fill in. So, for instance, God is greater than my bills. God is greater than my worries. God is greater than my boss. She kept the magnet on her refrigerator as a reminder that, no matter what she might be experiencing, God was in control. The God who loved her was greater than whatever challenge she might be facing.

In today's gospel, Jesus shows that he is greater than the powers of nature. The disciples were being tossed about the Sea of Galilee by strong waves and head winds. Despite the chaos and obvious danger, Jesus comes to them walking on the water. He shows himself to have power over nature even at the height of its fury by calming the sea and its waves. The display of majesty and power leaves no doubt in the minds of the disciples that Jesus is the Son of God.

Throughout the Scriptures, the sea symbolizes chaos and nature's power to destroy. We see it dramatically in the story of Noah as the flood waters rise to destroy all life on the earth. The prophet Jonah likewise encounters rough seas when he tries to flee the Lord's command that he preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. It is only when he stops running away from the Lord and is tossed into the raging sea that the waters calm down.

But, the seas can also be the place where God's saving power is manifest. For instance, as the Hebrews are fleeing the Egyptian army, the Red Sea parts for them allowing them to cross to safety. And, at the end of the forty year pilgrimage in the desert, it is the waters of the Jordan River which welcome them into the promised land flowing with milk and honey.

So, the sea represents both the fury and chaos of nature as well as the place where God shows himself to be Master and Savior.

In our everyday lives, the same is true. It is precisely where there is chaos in our lives, where there is confusion, where we are struggling that God shows his power in our lives. God shows himself to be greater than any pain we may be suffering. God shows himself to be master over our lives and over our world.

How do we come to know this power of God at work in our lives? Very simply, we have to begin by thanking God for our difficulties and for our struggles. That's right! We have to thank God for the chaos and confusion in our day-to-day lives. When we stop complaining and start thanking God we begin to realize that God has a plan for our life and that God can use our problems to make us grow in holiness. By praising God, we proclaim our faith that God is the master of our lives and that God is greater than our trials and tribulations. And, we grow in the assurance that God will never allow us to be submerged by the waters, but even when we fail as Peter did, he will be there to reach out a hand to us. By thanking God, we don't trivialize our pain and suffering, rather we maximize our experience of God's power at work in us.

Peter was doing a fine job of walking on the water. He only got into trouble because he took his eyes off Jesus and starting worrying about the wind and the waves. In that moment, Peter forgot that Jesus was greater than the sea and greater than the power of nature. As long as we keep our eyes on Jesus, no matter how daunting or how difficult our lives may become, we will be fine. We can be assured of this because the God who holds the whole world in his hands cares for us even more than we care for ourselves. He will pull us to safety soon.