How are you carrying your cross? Are you dragging it behind you begrudgingly, or ignoring it altogether?
Today, Jesus shares his biggest reminder about carrying our crosses, one we tend to forget.
Listen to Matthew’s reflection and learn the one critical conversation that will change your view of the cross and lead you towards your truest self.
Life is Messy – Finding Your Truest Self
THIS WEEK’S GOSPEL IS LUKE 14:25-33
How are you carrying your cross? Are you dragging it behind you begrudgingly, or ignoring it altogether?
Today, Jesus shares his biggest reminder about carrying our crosses, one we tend to forget.
Listen to Matthew’s reflection and learn the one critical conversation that will change your view of the cross and lead you towards your truest self.
Daily Meditation – By Accepting Our Sufferings, We Spare Ourselves Much Harder Ones
“By accepting the sufferings ‘offered’ by life and allowed by God for our progress and purification, we spare ourselves much harder ones. We need to develop this kind of realism and, once and for all, stop dreaming of a life without suffering or conflict. That is the life of heaven, not earth. We must take up our cross and follow Christ courageously every day; the bitterness of that cross will sooner or later be transformed into sweetness.”— Fr. Jacques Philippe, p. 49
//Catholic Company//
Minute Meditation – Triumph of the Cross
Jesus was free because he was rooted in the love of God and, therefore, humble. Ultimately, Jesus was free enough to offer his life as a sacrifice for the sake of God’s truth. Humbly rooted in love, Jesus was free to die on a cross. And in that freedom, God’s freedom of love was revealed, the love that brings about a new future. The cross signifies to us that if we are free enough to love then we are free enough to die, and if we are free to die then we are free to live. As long as we are in relation to a God who is freedom-in-love, then death will be part of our journey. For every distance of separation from God must be overcome by death, by giving up isolated existence for a greater union. Finite human life longs for fulfillment of relationship, for union, and only death can remove the veil that separates us from the infinite love of God. Yes, freedom is the gift of love but love prevails in freedom. Violence, suffering and death do not have the last word in God. The last word is love.
— from the book The Humility of God: A Franciscan Perspective by Ilia Delio, OSF
//Franciscan Media//
Feast Day – September 14 – Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
The Story of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
Early in the fourth century, Saint Helena, mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine, went to Jerusalem in search of the holy places of Christ’s life. She razed the second-century Temple of Aphrodite, which tradition held was built over the Savior’s tomb, and her son built the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher on that spot. During the excavation, workers found three crosses. Legend has it that the one on which Jesus died was identified when its touch healed a dying woman.
The cross immediately became an object of veneration. At a Good Friday celebration in Jerusalem toward the end of the fourth century, according to an eyewitness, the wood was taken out of its silver container and placed on a table together with the inscription Pilate ordered placed above Jesus’ head: Then “all the people pass through one by one; all of them bow down, touching the cross and the inscription, first with their foreheads, then with their eyes; and, after kissing the cross, they move on.”
To this day, the Eastern Churches, Catholic and Orthodox alike, celebrate the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on the September anniversary of the basilica’s dedication. The feast entered the Western calendar in the seventh century after Emperor Heraclius recovered the cross from the Persians, who had carried it off in 614, 15 years earlier. According to the story, the emperor intended to carry the cross back into Jerusalem himself, but was unable to move forward until he took off his imperial garb and became a barefoot pilgrim.
Reflection
The cross is today the universal image of Christian belief. Countless generations of artists have turned it into a thing of beauty to be carried in procession or worn as jewelry. To the eyes of the first Christians, it had no beauty. It stood outside too many city walls, decorated only with decaying corpses, as a threat to anyone who defied Rome’s authority—including Christians who refused sacrifice to Roman gods. Although believers spoke of the cross as the instrument of salvation, it seldom appeared in Christian art unless disguised as an anchor or the Chi-Rho until after Constantine’s edict of toleration.
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation – Daily Glimpses of God
Even we in our ordinary lives can embrace Christ on the cross. We can place ourselves physically and spiritually in a space or place that makes it at least a compatible space for “hearing” God’s voice and “seeing” God’s manifestations, should God decide to show us the divine presence in a way that is beyond the faith we have from our baptism. And whether we actually hear or see anything of God or not, we are there at the foot of the cross letting him embrace us in any way he wills to embrace us. It could be as simple as an increase of the faith we already have; it could be an inspiration to do something further with our lives in order to praise and give thanks to God, or we could be inspired to follow Christ’s way of the cross more faithfully in our own lives. Saint Clare is, I believe, one of God’s chosen ones who shows us Someone we can love who is daily revealing his presence in images – like the cross, like the Eucharistic bread and wine.
— from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God’s Loveby Murry Bodo, OFM
Saint of the Day – August 18 – Saint Helen
St. Helen, also known as St. Helena (d. 327 A.D.), was a woman of humble means from Asia Minor. She married the future Roman Emperor Constantius Chlorus, and their son Constantine was born c. 272. Constantius divorced Helen in c. 293 to marry Emperor Maximian’s daughter for the sake of political gain. When her son Constantine became the Roman Emperor, St. Helen was given the imperial title “Augusta” and was treated like royalty. After Constantine legalized Christianity across the Roman Empire, St. Helen, a Christian convert, went to the Holy Land in search of the actual cross on which Christ was crucified, despite being in her 80s. She questioned local Christians and Jews and learned that the cross was buried under the Temple of Venus. Helen had the temple demolished and excavated. There she discovered the Holy Sepulcher, three crosses, the board with Pilate’s inscription, and the nails which pierced Jesus’ Sacred Body. In order to determine which cross was the Lord’s, the Bishop of Jerusalem touched them to a corpse, causing the man to come back to life. A second miraculous healing of a sick woman confirmed the discovery of the True Cross. Christians flocked to Jerusalem to venerate the Holy Cross. St. Helen then visited all the holy places of Jesus’ life and built many churches over their locations, including Bethlehem, the Mount of Olives, and the Garden of Gethsemane. St. Helen is the patron of divorced people, empresses, difficult marriages, converts, and archeologists. Her feast day is August 18th.
//Catholic Company//
Saint of the Day – August 17 – Saint Joan of the Cross
Saint Joan of the Cross’ Story
An encounter with a shabby old woman many dismissed as insane prompted Saint Joan to dedicate her life to the poor. For Joan, who had a reputation as a businesswoman intent on monetary success, this was a significant conversion.
Born in 1666, in Anjou, France, Joan worked in the family business—a small shop near a religious shrine—from an early age. After her parents’ death she took over the shop. She quickly became known for her greediness and insensitivity to the beggars who often came seeking help.
That was until she was touched by the strange woman who claimed she was on intimate terms with the deity. Joan, who had always been devout, even scrupulous, became a new person. She began caring for needy children. Then the poor, elderly, and sick came to her. Over time, she closed the family business so she could devote herself fully to good works and penance.
She went on to found what came to be known as the Congregation of Saint Anne of Providence. It was then she took the religious name of Joan of the Cross. By the time of her death in 1736 she had founded 12 religious houses, hospices, and schools. Pope John Paul II canonized her in 1982.
Reflection
The downtown areas of most major cities hold a population of “street people.” Well-dressed folks usually avoid making eye contact, probably for fear of being asked for a handout. That was Joan’s attitude until the day one of them touched her heart. Most people thought the old woman was crazy, but she put Joan on the road to sainthood. Who knows what the next beggar we meet might do for us?
//Franciscan Media//
Minute Meditation – The Mirror of the Cross
Clare looked into the San Damiano crucifix, which had spoken to Francis. Like her, we look into the mirror of Christ on the cross to see God and to see ourselves; who we are, who we can become. As Christ mirrors us, so we, when we contemplate that mirror, begin to mirror him, who is both God and us when we are transformed by virtue. And it all begins with contemplation, which enables us to see, not subject to object, but subject to subject. What we look at begins to look back at us, both of us alive in the Spirit of God. The cross is both the image of God and of us, only if we let ourselves be transformed by contemplating the crucified Christ. Clare gazed on the San Damiano crucifix for over forty years, and it transformed her into Christ’s mirror.
— from the book Mystics: Twelve Who Reveal God’s Loveby Murry Bodo, OFM
//Franciscan Media//
Morning Offering – Seek the Glory of Christ
“He who seeks not the Cross of Christ seeks not the glory of Christ.”
— St. John of the Cross
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