I wanted to share this meditation with the Forum members. I think it is so very rich and useful for many days of meditation. May it be a blessing!
Silouan, monk
�I live Crucified!�
Feast of Saint Veronica Giuliani
Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time: July 10, 2003
2 Corinthians 4.6-11, 16-17; Psalm 59.2, 10, 17-18; Matthew 16.24-27
by Father Thomas Dynetius of the Mother of Sorrows
The true lover of the Cross, the one who finds in the Cross the Pearl of Great price, would want nothing but to talk about the treasure he found in the Cross. And so it must not surprise us when we hear Saint Veronica Giuliani, that faithful Lover of the Cross, say,
�I cannot speak of anything else; I cannot reason about anything else; I want to go about inviting the whole world to seek this treasure.�
That is part of the blessing the Cross brings into our lives: that pleasant urge to draw souls to the Cross, which is the splendor of life and source of all spiritual energy. Was it not why our holy mother Clare called us to be drawn into the perfume of that Divine Lover suspended upon the wood of the Cross? We must be drawn by the Crucified Love, not simply to adore Him in His suffering, but to image Him in our lives. We must pattern our lives after His image, and become witnesses to His love on earth.
The best way to witness the life of Jesus is to live �His life� faithfully. This is what Jesus envisioned when He called His followers to leave behind all that this world could offer and take up His Cross daily. He wanted them to cling to Him totally by renouncing their attachment to the world, to their own abilities and talents, and trust in His grace working through them. They must go out and proclaim to the world all that they had learnt from Him; they must reflect His life as they had witnessed It first hand. That is, in their lives the shadow of His Cross must be seen. In their renunciation of all earthly comforts for the sake of the Kingdom, they must reflect the self-emptying of the Son of God who renounced the glory of heaven and assumed the life of a way-farer in the world amongst sinful humanity; in their willingness to submit themselves to poverty they must reflect the nakedness of Jesus as He embraced the poverty of the Cross; in having nothing yet possessing everything that really matters in life, they must reveal their share in the blessings of eternal life; they were to reflect the life of the world to come as they lived their perfect love for God even in an imperfect manner. Heaven is where Jesus is. And so they must live in Him, live for Him, live through Him. To do this they must live crucified.
But the Cross is a contradiction. No doubt about it. It is a contradiction to a believer and gentile alike. To the one who is steeped in the spiritual wealth of our faith, the Cross is a contradiction in a world that is insensitive to the tremendous sacrifice of God for man, because how can one see Love being crucified and yet continue to ignore Its plea? And again, although our faith teaches our salvation is won through the Cross, to envision the Cross in one�s life as a positive necessity in living our earthly life with a goal to attaining heaven is almost a contradiction to many �good� Christians as well. We are content with the truth that Jesus suffered for us. Some ask: �It is good enough that Jesus bore that Cross and died for us; but, are we not the people of His resurrection? Why must then man suffer? Why must �we� suffer? Must man suffer in order to reach heaven?� But the real question is �Must God suffer for man? What sort of justice is this that someone else pays for our follies, and He dies so that we may live? Yet, God had to die. He must die daily for us, in order to continue the effect of that first death in our weak lives. From this necessity of His daily dying in us arises our own sense of gratitude which should nudge us to reciprocate His love in our lives, His death in our lives. Therefore, moved by Love, we seek to live in Him, through Him, and for Him. We must live crucified. How do we live crucified to the world, to the flesh and to our pride-filled self?
�I live crucified, yet I have not learned to die!
I do not know how to accomplish this death to self,�
wrote Saint Veronica Giuliani. Even mystics, blessed with the Stigmata, are frustrated at their inability to have totally died to the world. But this frustration is not meant to lead us to despair or desolation but to spiritual renewal and resurgence from our spiritual lethargy to which we often unconsciously slip into. Such frustrations are indeed blessings because they remind us that �The true life is to live in God� and that �This life is a new life in God, through God and for God, a divine life in suffering� (Saint Veronica Giuliani). A life in God, a life through God, and a life for God: this is achieved only through divine life lived in human suffering. This is being crucified with Christ, which is our goal; this is the mystery of a Christian�s union with God to which we aspire; this gives meaning to our life, for in this is our destiny: to live crucified�
In the Crucified Christ,
Fr. Thomas Dynetius of the Mother of Sorrows
