Photo by Katie Moretta
Calvary flattens me.
When I look upon the cross, all the crutches of my own self-reliance start to splinter. I feel my own incapacity to return God’s love so acutely that the only relief is to look away. But I can’t look away.
In the fall, the Sisters of Life came to visit our chaplaincy in Kingston, and I had a chance to talk to one of them. I told her how I hated that I can’t return the love of the Cross, how I feel so pitiful in comparison. She looked at me in that moment and said, “God made your love perfect. He takes your love seriously!”
I’ve been holding onto those words since. God takes your love seriously.
He takes our love so seriously that He created the Mass. He knows that gathering around a dinner table is such an intrinsically human thing that He made Himself the smallest, humblest, yet most integral part of every meal. He takes our love so seriously that He wants to dwell in us and hold us together. He takes our love so seriously that He gave us a means to create community and to support one another built right into our worship of Him.
God takes our love so seriously that He divinized the human body by taking its form. I recently came back from the Holy Land, and the whole time this Sister’s words kept striking me anew. He walked this Earth, He took up space and touched things and called places home. He laughed with friends and wept and cherished His Mother. He came to the Earth and now we have a place we can journey to. He takes our love so seriously that He fulfilled the gospels and crushed Hell and opened the gates of Heaven, all before we even remotely deserved it.
And even if we can’t get to the Holy Land, God takes our love so seriously that He is everywhere. In every tabernacle. Dwelling, waiting for us to come to Him, even for just a moment.
I was reminded recently that the love of Christ on the Cross is like a waterfall outpouring, and my love is like a little cup. God doesn’t expect me to be a waterfall, He just asks that I pour out my little cup again and again out of love of Him. And each time I pour it out, He refills it anew by the Cross.
In the Holy Land I got to venerate the rock of Calvary, the anointing slab, and the empty tomb. God takes our love so seriously that the tomb is empty. Now, in Lent, let us journey towards it without fear of the Cross, knowing that death is not the end of the story.