The Hard Sayings. Tuesday, March 18. Lent 2014.

We like things that are easy to accept.

Things that make sense.

Things that don’t make us think.

Things that don’t challenge us.

This is not a new way of thinking.

The Gospel of John,

talks about how disciples left

because the sayings were hard to accept

and they wondered who could accept them.

Christ’s whole life is composed of radical concepts,

ones that do not really make sense most of the time.

We can’t wrap our minds around it.

Part of the gift of faith is to bridge those gaps

that our minds simply cannot comprehend.

The Tantum Ergo written by St. Thomas Aquinas

points out our need for faith to bridge the gap

between Christ’s teachings and our senses.

Præstet fides supplementum sensuum defectui.

Faith for all defects supplying, where the feeble senses fail.

Though some of Christ’s teachings are hard to comprehend,

He made the most important teaching of all a bit easier for us.

The Cross.

The teaching that contains the most messages,

the most vital lessons,

the greatest example of love.

He was not just a man on the cross.

He came to us in the form of an infant.

The Child, Jesus.

He came to us in a way in which we could understand.

A way in which we could sympathize with.

A way that our minds might understand.

Though the story does not end here in the manger.

We all know very well that the wood of the manger

becomes the wood of the cross.

But we have come to love this infant,

this Child.

And we might not understand the Cross fully

but we feel something.

We feel the love

and see the sacrifice.

We know that the man on the cross was once an infant.

A Child that we could comprehend

and easily love.

Now we are challenged.

We see Him not as an adorable infant.

We see Him as a man being persecuted,

ridiculed,

and killed.

All for these hard sayings

and love for us.

We gladly knelt by Him at the manger.

That’s easy.

Will you just as gladly lay prostrate at the foot of the Cross?

That’s hard.

“The Infant Jesus is forever linked to the Cross, there always remains this context of love.”

 

This Lenten blog series is based upon St. Louis de Montfort's writings. Unless otherwise noted, all the phrases in quotation marks are taken from the book Jesus Living in Mary.