The Cross is a Promise
I never wanted my life to contain a litany of losses: divorce, emotional and sexual abuse, adultery, rejection, and the death of my child. And yet, through my suffering, the Lord cracked me open so completely that I could finally let myself be loved and learn to live in the freedom of that love.
When I surrendered to the crosses the Lord allowed in my life, I found healing. Through His grace, the darkness of grief led me to flourishing as a beloved daughter of God. It is the mystery of the cross: a promise that our suffering is not the end of the story.
The Cross is a Kiss
Faith asks us to see suffering not as a rebuke or punishment, but as a kiss. Suffering is an invitation to come to the foot of the cross and allow the Lord to offer you a holy kiss from his bowed and bloody head. Jesus wants us to let him carry us up Calvary’s hill, accompanied by his Holy Mother, to unite our suffering and grief to His. He longs to heal us and hold us while we wrap our arms around the hard wood of His cross.
This takes heroic faith. Many of us feel rejected or forgotten in our suffering. We feel rebuked by the heavy sorrow of the cross, but God’s word brings sure consolation. Hebrews 12:6 says, “Whom the Lord loves, he disciplines; he scourges every son he acknowledges.” The Greek word for acknowledge is paradechomai which means to “receive favorably.”
Hold on to the hope that you are not just received favorably in your scourging, you are loved.
The Cross is a Ladder
When the Lord invites us to the foot of the cross, He doesn’t want us to stop there. When I found myself crushed by grief, Jesus beckoned me to come even closer. He didn’t want me to gaze at him from a distance, so I dragged a stepladder to the cross and climbed as high as I could reach. I pressed my cheek against his belly and placed my suffering all the way into the pierced heart of Christ.
It took me years to realize my cross is the ladder. It wasn’t my own efforts that allowed me to climb into the heart of Christ. Great suffering is the pathway to intimacy with Jesus.
St. Rose of Lima is quoted in Catechism paragraph 618, “Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to Heaven.”
Many will climb Calvary’s hill but, without great suffering, cannot ascend the cross. Only through the ladder of my cross could my wounds become portals of Christ’s glory, and my scars made me look more like Him.
The Cross is a Promise
The Cross is a promise that your suffering is not the end of the story. Through the cross, we are boldly invited to surrender in faith that the Lord is writing a beautiful love story in our lives, even when our heart is broken.
I came to understand that each of the painful crosses in my life was a place of depth and healing with Jesus. He gouged the hard earth of my heart to create fertile furrows that, in time, led to my freedom and flourishing.
The Lord always gives more than he takes. Through healing with Jesus, I am more the woman I am meant to be than if my heart had never been broken.
If you are here, you have lost something very great in your life. The loss of a child is a suffering surpassed only by the loss of a soul. But in faith – if you bring your whole broken heart to him at the foot of the cross and climb the ladder of your suffering, Jesus will pour his love story into your life so you can bring His love story to the world.
The cross is a promise, dear ones, and the Lord is faithful. Your healing and resurrection are already underway.
