Remembering The Cross. By: C.C.

A spirit of irreverence toward God increases to the measure that one lives mindless of the Cross.

The Cross that we can often be mindless of bleeds for our attention. Not just a look of acknowledgement but of trembling reverence, of complete and honest submission in whatever capacity we have received to offer ourselves. 

This remembering, though not pretty or comfortable is a necessity of our spiritual life and faith in Christ . It is by this alone that we begin to grasp the fragments of the understanding available to us about the height of Christ's radical love.

Love is taught here. 

Love is revealed.

Given life, learned in the giving up of Christ's life for us. 

The Cross is our unified place of belonging. It is the inescapable reality of our humanity . We , would rather suffer it without naming it, live chased by its shadow but keep running on our own esteem. 

Silly we are to run from such love. Strange love no doubt , but only in meditation of it do the implications of this love unfold to us, shaped as a cross.

"Do this is in memory of me"  becomes the necessity of remembering our belonging. The harness to our striving toward sanctity, and our encouragement along the way toward the eternal end. 

What we gain by our nearness to Calvary is the gift of the third day, the Resurrected Bread to consume and sustain us. 

The Liturgy is the place we walk this journey from the incarnation to the resurrection , intentionally. In this fullness and this completed mystery, yet ever hidden, we're made ready to see what has been eternally left to us. 

Do we know Who is among us? 

Are we aware of what is taking place?

We speak of encountering Jesus, we speak of authentic witnesses. He is met in the Calvary of our hearts an encounter all consuming , we must consent to be attentive to this greeting. This eternal encounter. At the table of Christ is where witnesses are made, where the Apostles were fed with necessary remembrance, and where transformation is radiated; from what dwells in the interior, and not from the peripheral matters we often select to be consumed by.

The priest at the altar carries us to this remembering, Fathers to us, Sons in the Son, to give us a nourishment eternal. 

We suffer from infinite longings in those areas of finite limitations. Only in relationship with the infinite can we sober ourselves to the uses of our finite things, our journey here, and of Calvary's visitation to us. 

The Eucharist is the Son, our light, so much the sun risen on the third day, conquering evil and darkness, not absolving us of our suffering, but claiming us as beloved. 

The Eucharist.  Father lifts the Son before us, in this rising mirrors that of the sun , expelling all darkness, redeeming so much by His light. This spotless , unblemished Eucharist that we gather to consume even before the sun is risen shines eternally for us even if the sun outside does not. There is such an important grace here, this is the only essential Light for us. This is what sustains us even if darkness was all we could perceive outside of Him. 

In the priests hands is lifted the Son, filling the faithful with rays of love, mercy, hope, and belonging. A grace of "keeping watch" with Christ . Of standing at the foot of the Cross while others fled. 

Stand there first fixed at the Cross. The love is agonizing.

Irreverence toward God begins in our forgetting of the Cross. You will know how to receive with an awe of reverence the Bread of Life, the love of Jesus, when you remember to remember the Cross.