Ave Crux spes unica

The year’s yearnings accompany, sometimes devouring, leaving us breathless. We need rest! Similar to the Shabbat, Lent offers us a space in time to be real by resting from what we do, which often summarises our self-understanding. 

Lent can help us to understand the patterns that underpin much of our doing. And as we understand, like Saint Mary of Egypt, encountering the Cross, we discover our freedom. 

Most of us are neither cold nor hot: “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth” (Revelation 3,15). The price we pay for being lukewarm is that we become indifferent, ignoring ourselves. Fear dominates!

Like the Laodiceans, to whom the passage is addressed, we fail to make a difference in the world by being a light (Matthew 5,14), because we have lost our saltiness (Matthew 5,13), replacing it with feeling snug, soothing in our unhealed wounds. 

Lent is a time that invites us to be silent and appreciate that the whole cosmos is alive, on fire, inviting us to wonder beyond our impositions as our journey, whose end is the empty tomb, recalls us to our senses. Gratitude! 

The wounded crucifix is not surpassed: its wounds invite us to remember Thomas (John 20,24-29), enticing us to humbly let our fingers touch them, healing us from whatever darkens our hearts. Shabbat’s stillness accompanies, enabling us to open our eyes and see: the incarnated Resurrection lived out daily. 

Drifting away, lent challenges us to scrutinise our comforts and the fear of losing them. Only love is credible! Lent reminds us to reaffirm it as the crucifix’s shadow enlightens our desires, deepening our understanding by learning to be still, not fearing. 


Martin


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