St. Barnabas Parish Lenten Journey 2009

"Through the Cross to the Resurrection"

This Lent, join your fellow parishioners as we reflect on how we have experienced resurrection through the crosses in our lives.
 
Each week, a fellow parishioner will share with you a reflection based on a Station of the Cross.  In addition to sharing personal insights, each article will offer thought-provoking questions inviting you to look deeper into the reality of your own life.
 
As part of your Lenten prayer, make time in your week to reflect on the questions and write down your thoughts, insights, and experiences. Journaling is a wonderful spiritual exercise that allows you to look into the depths of your soul. It nurtures your inner growth and personal discovery and helps you to process the presence of God in your life.

You are invited to share any of your reflections, by name or anonymously.  Inspiring and appropriate reflections may be published on this site as a form of faith-sharing. Many times it is through the stories and experiences of others that we are inspired in our own faith journey.  By sharing your story you may truly help someone else move through their cross to resurrection!
 
Please submit your reflection or comments to Kitty Ryan at the rectory or at ktryanstbarnabas@yahoo.com.

Week 1: Jesus Accepts the Cross

(submitted by Member of St. Barnabas Liturgy Committee)

Jesus as God, made-man, knew what awaited him as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He did not deserve it, He was not guilty, He had not committed a crime.  He was blameless, sinless and innocent and yet He accepted His cross. 

We too have been given crosses to carry.  Sometimes the crosses or difficulties are the result of our actions; other times they are undeserved.  My father was a very loving, generous, honest man.  In March 2007 he was diagnosed with leukemia.  Over the next three months there were many visits to the doctor and hospital for treatment and tests.  During this time he never complained.  He did not focus on himself.  He talked to the nurses treating him and asked about their lives – he knew how many children they had, how many jobs they were working and if they had a long drive to work.  He wanted to spend time with his grandchildren and make sure that his family would take care of one another when he was no longer with us.  He talked to the friends who came to visit in the hospital, asked them about their lives, and made sure my mother treated them to dinner when they left.  My father’s focus was turned outward toward others when he carried his cross.  He showed strength, compassion and grace in accepting his cross.

The meaning of the cross is difficult to comprehend.  By accepting a cross He did not deserve, Jesus substituted Himself for us.   A quote seen in a church bulletin several years ago explains it well.

“The concept of substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation.  For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man.  Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be.  Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.”  (John Scott, The Cross of Christ)

Reflection Questions: What crosses have you been asked to carry?  How have you accepted your crosses?

RESPONSE:

On the day I left for a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I found out that my daughter-in-law and one of my oldest and dearest friends were to undergo serious cancer operations and that I would not be able to know the results until I returned. So, I traveled from Galilee to Bethlehem to Jerusalem and up the Way of the Cross to Calvary just as Jesus did. This experience gave me a much deeper idea of what Jesus went through on his final journey – not relating to a single station, but to his entire journey. When I returned, I found out the results of the surgeries – my daughter–in-law’s surgery was successful and she is now in a rehab program, but my friend was terminal and has since passed away. These two journeys – following the steps of Jesus in Israel and experiencing the suffering of my daughter-in-law and friend have given me a much deeper meaning of the Lenten season and the Way of the Cross.

John Richert, St. Barnabas Parishioner

Week 2: Jesus Falls the First Time

(submitted by Peter Foote,  Member of the Spiritual Life Commission)

I ask myself, I ask you. Could I, can you, cry one tiny tear? 

Jesus feels what each of us feels, each burden that weighs me down.
My mistakes and yours become portions of the wood - sorrows that he accepts.

We have turned, all of us, in leisure to our own way. And so Jesus totes our culture.
He adds our savings and spending choices, our uncaring narcissism.

Poverty, people that we rushed by, searching eyes that we avoid, our peering TV eyes,
junk for which we searched the internet. Weary Jesus. He feels more heaviness of piled iniquity.

Carrying such a cross hurts. Could I, can you tear up? Cry a little? When you and I were among
the missing, perhaps part of parking spaces empty of ethnics, did we fail to complement the suffering of Jesus?

Cutting things I say, support I didn’t give on the street or in the car, I remember now.
Absolution we skipped. But what happened to Christ? From our adding weight, he
Falls for the First Time. That is God - priest, prophet, king - falls down.

We adore you, O Christ. We bless you. The whole world is in your hands. Us. The world of evil
lies within your wooden cross! We turned away, to your and my way. From preventable death
even we turned to our choice. Our nation’s policy turns away.

And so, in Beverly and in the whole world, Jesus does bend and bend and  . . .
Seeing can we cry a little tear, a drop on my cheek, a misty eye perhaps?

Jesus carries my coldness, our lack of feeling, scabbed vision and he falling, reaches down his
right arm feeling for the ground of our being.

Reflection Questions:

On a second reading, what stands out, has most impact upon you?

Ask two of your friends to read it: write us and share truly what each says to you.                                                                                     

RESPONSE:

Comments on Peter Foote’s verses on Jesus’ falling:

. . . “reaches down his right arm feeling for the ground of our being.” When we fall under our cross into depression we may look on it as a friend, pushing us down to safe ground.  As Teilhard de Chardin says in The Divine Milieu, “We are not to faint in the shadow of the Cross but to rise in its creative fire.”

Pete also emphasizes the sins of omission that will appear on our judgment day resume, see Matt. 25:41-46.

Richard & Paula Bukacek, St. Barnabas Parishioners
 

Week 3: Simon Helps Jesus Carry the Cross

(submitted by Gerri Howard, Member of the Spiritual Life Commission and Liturgy Committee)

Jesus was doing his very best to carry the cross the soldiers had placed on him. But he had already been through so much and he was terribly weak. The cross became unbearable. He had already fallen once under its weight. Who would help Him?

I’m sure many people would have helped. His friends, His followers, would have stepped up had they known just how to help and had not been afraid.

But it was a stranger, a passer-by who was enlisted by the soldiers to help Jesus. Surprised that he was pressed into service, Simon willingly gave Jesus a brief respite from the weight of that unbearable cross.

It is worthwhile this Lent to reflect on the crosses we carry. Which “cross” burdens us the most? Who helps us carry this cross? Might it be a person we didn’t expect that gave us the needed respite from the burden of our cross?

I have been blessed to live in the St. Barnabas Community for 40 years. The different “crosses” that have weighed me down throughout my life pale in comparison to the crosses of others I’ve known. Nevertheless, a cross is a cross and so many people have helped me. Often it was a family member or a dear friend that made my cross tolerable. Sometimes it was a chance encounter with a fellow parishioner at church or County Fair or Borders that unknowingly gave me the care and support I needed at that time.

But more often than not it is Jesus Himself who pulls me through. His presence in the Eucharist and the words He speaks through scripture give me the hope and strength to deal with life’s challenges and crosses.
 

Reflection Questions:  This week consider the cross that burdens you. Who is the “Simon” that bears it for you and gives you respite? Are you “Simon” to someone else?  Have a Blessed Lent!

Please send responses to Kitty Ryan at the rectory or at ktryanstbarnabas@yahoo.com.

Week 4: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem

(submitted by Susan Dardar, Coordinator of St. Barnabas Jr. Art & Environment Committee)

"If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my highest joy." (Psalm 137: 5-6)