Day 21 - Sharing in the Sorrow of Christ

Name:  Alice Mills (faculty)

Scripture:

“. . . that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.” (Romans 9:2)

Reflection:

In the Catholic tradition, a mystical experience exists in which one receives a revelation of the sorrow of Christ.  Paul, writing in this verse to believers who have gone astray, understands that to share in Christ’s ministry is to share in His grief.  Yes, our faith is predicated on a victory over death but while we co-labor with Jesus, as we carry our crosses and begin to see the travesties of sin played out over the lives of individual, families and nations, we actively participate in the sorrows of others as well as our own.

For me, Lent is an opportunity to sit in the sackcloth and ashes, to look more deeply into my own losses and into the losses of those closest to me.  I want to share in His grief at my grief.  I want to know that my losses matter to Him.  Knowing that He shares in the bitter cups that life can serve gives me the patience to wait out the forty days in the wilderness.   I want to know that He is grieved too at the consequences of sin and death played out across the expanses of time.  I am sad that disease claims lives, that poverty shapes nations and that I judged my neighbor.   And I know that He is sad too, that it is safe to be sad with Him, even as we wait for our happy ending.

Prayer:

Thank you, Jesus, for your willingness to enter into unimaginable sorrow.  Help me to extend compassion to others and to myself for our grief, whether self-inflicted or by circumstances outside of our control.  Thank you for honoring me with your grief and let me honor others by sharing in the pain of their losses.