It would take Christ to pass by with his Cross...

 


It would take Christ to pass by with his Cross.  For years that ardent prayer has echoed in my heart.  It was my soul’s longing when I lived through the trauma of those early days of The Troubles in Derry.  Looking down from Creggan Heights over the seething Bogside, I used to repeat with many sighs...

It would take Christ to pass by here with his Cross...

That desire, that aching longing is intensified a hundredfold now as we weep over the bleeding wound that is Ukraine, over the gaping wound that recent earthquakes have opened up in Turkey and Syria, over the unstoppable human haemorrhage of refugees and the running sores of festering conflicts in Africa and throughout our world... 

Yes, wouldn’t it take Christ to pass by with his Cross in all these situations?

As we begin these graced days of Lent we find new hope and consolation because Christ is indeed passing by, or rather, He is right there in the heart of all this unspeakable suffering, just as Elie Wiesel could say that God was there in the Nazi concentration camp on the gallows where the young innocent victim struggled between life and death, dying in slow agony...

He is lifting the Cross from the shoulders of these millions of suffering people, our brothers and sisters... He is taking their burden of death, anguish and despair upon himself.  He is there with us all, because as the mystic, Caryll Houselander said of World War II, “This war is the Passion of Christ”.  Yes, Christ suffers his Passion until the end of time in everyone who suffers in mind heart or body...

He is there, not ‘passing by’, but fully engaged.  He is there lifting the heavy cross from the broken shoulders of all who are part of this vast sea of human suffering.  He is ministering to them in the heroic dedication and courage of all aid workers, in all who perseveringly seek a peaceful resolution to all conflict...

Here in Carmel this is our burning Lenten plea:

                        It would take Christ to pass by our broken world with his Cross...

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