On Personal Relationship with the Savior
Finding your place at the foot of the Cross this Holy Week.
In the fourth century, one of the great fathers of the Church, St. Gregory of Nazianzen said,
If you are Simon of Cyrene, take up the cross and follow.
If you are crucified with him as a thief, come to know God as kindhearted.
If you are Joseph from Arimathea, ask for the body of the crucified;
let that which cleanses the world become yours.
If you are a certain Mary, weep at daybreak.
Be the first to see the stone removed.
The way this anticipates the robust personalism of the 20th and 21st centuries is beautiful to me, as a John Paul II nerd. But more-so it reminds us as we enter into our universal meditations on the Passion, Death, and Resurrection this week, that there is no one perfect way to be a good Christian;. The mission Our Lord created us for is entirely unique.
This calls to mind the Church’s teaching on the conscience.
The conscience is ‘the most secret core and sanctuary of a man, where he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths.’ It ‘can speak to his heart more specifically: do this, shun that.’1
In the drama of the Passion, that voice does not call us all to the same role. Some of us are asked to be Simon this year—shouldering a cross we did not choose. Others are invited to be the weeping women, or Joseph, or even the thief who simply turns his head and asks to be remembered. The mission is unrepeatable because the relationship is unrepeatable.
He has set before us certain joys, works, prayers, and sufferings for reasons that won’t become totally clear until after the veil has finally been lifted. What we can do is form our consciences well through prayer, not live on autopilot, and attend to what has been placed in front of us.
While we were still sinners…
Another truth that we sometimes struggle to truly believe is that when Jesus was suffering in the garden, at the pillar, and on the cross, he had us in mind; each one of us as an individual. He died to save you, to save me.
How often am I Simon of Cyrene, or one of the women weeping on the Via Crucis? I’m far more often the one crowning him with thorns and driving nails in His hands. And yet, “While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” I don’t know that I can truly grasp the extent to which my sins wound the heart of Jesus. But surely it is sweet for the savior to save.
I can’t speak to the theology of atonement. All I know is that I want the grace to console my Savior rather than wound Him. And the moment I made that my goal in life was the same moment I discovered it was actually possible to become unattached from my sin.
He is the Savior of the world, yes, but He’s also mine. This Holy Week, may each of us have the courage to ask: “Which role in the Passion is He inviting me to play?” Whatever the answer, it will be the one that lets us love Him most personally, most uniquely, most completely.
Dominum et vivificantem, 43. John Paul II was quoting Gaudium et spes.
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