"Father can you bless this crucifix? It’s from my aunt. It was my grandfather’s. It’s for my godson who is being baptized next week. It’s for my daughter who is being deployed overseas, It’s for my friend who has cancer."Rarely have I been asked to bless a crucifix or any other sacred object that did not have the story of a relationship behind it. More specifically the request to bless a crucifix typically reveals not just an ordinary relationship but a relationship for which one is passionate. Passionate relationships are the most significant ones in our lives. They reflect our deepest love and often the place of our deepest suffering; suffering because we love.
This Commemoration of the Lord’s Passion and the entire journey of Lent itself is one that is marked by relationships, a passionate relationship between God and his people, Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd and his flock. It began in the dessert with a passionate relationship with evil and temptation. In the transfiguration, the Father’s passionate love is revealed within the relationship of the law and the prophets, represented by Moses and Elijah. Throughout his public ministry Jesus' passion for his disciples is clear as they struggle to understand who he is. The passionate relationship between Christ and the Scribes and Pharisees is one that challenges the religious leaders to authenticity in faith. Christ’s passion is reveled in the anger displayed to the money changers and merchants as well as the wisdom he shares with Jew, Greek and Roman. He is passionate about the remarkable figures of the woman at the well, the blind man whose sight is restored and Lazarus who is raised from the dead. Through intimate relationships there is passionate for those who fail him in denial and betrayal as well as those who remain at the foot of the cross.
The Passion of Jesus Christ makes no sense without relationship. It is the relationship with the chosen people of the covenant and ultimately the entire human family for which this suffering exists. It is for us who worship today. As the letter to the Hebrews explains, this High Priest could not know sin but chooses to know its effects, suffering, because of his passionate relationship with us.
When we use the word, "passion" the word, "love" is implied and suffering is understood. The greatest suffering in our lives comes about because we love first. Passionate love finds expression in suffering, because it is through the willingness to suffer, that the commitment to love is confirmed. In the passionate suffering of Christ we witness not only his love for us but the challenge to be imitators of that love.
In a reflection on the crucifixion, St. Thomas Aquinas instructs that if one seeks an example of love, there is no greater love than Christ on the cross. If one seeks an example of patience there is no greater example then Christ who patiently suffers what he could have avoided. If one seeks humility we should look on the one who willingly allowed himself to be judged by Pilate. If we see an example of obedience, follow him who became obedient to the father. If we seek to be detached from earthly things and only to what is everlasting see the one who was stripped, beaten and mocked. The giving of one's whole self, humility, obedience and detachment are examples of passionate love lived out and examples of how to love passionately.
On this Good Friday we offer universal prayers in our General Intercessions. We pray not only for ourselves, for those who share our faith and all people of faith, but we also pray for those who have no faith and even those who oppose faith; because this passionate love of the cross is for all. This passionate love seeks relationship with friend and enemy; believer and non-believer. We venerate the Holy Cross today and not just the corpus on it; because this instrument of death, is an instrument of passionate suffering. We embrace the cross and our suffering; we unite our suffering to his because the two great phrases of this week are, “Do this in memory of me,” and “Love one another as I have loved you.”
When I am asked, “Can you bless this Father?” I can not help but think that it already is because of the passionate love it depicts and so too is the relationship it represents. Today we witness how greatly we are loved and we accept the challenge to passionately love as we have been loved.
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