Reflection for Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Today's Mass Readings

“If anyone wants to be my disciple, take up his cross, and follow me.” These words sum up, radically, the Christian vocation: to become like Christ. The cross, which Christ took up, lead to his death on Calvary. We, too, in accepting the cross, must realize that it leads to our own death as well. Most often not physical death but a real one nonetheless: a death to self. It is a scary and challenging proposition that Christ asks us to make: to offer our lives as he did on Calvary.

Ash Wednesday reminded us that we all share in the same human condition, that we are finite, that we suffer, and that we die because we sin. And that it unites us in this recognition that we all have failed and require radical mercy. That, if we walk this path with Christ, we receive his reward.

It is in this we must hope and have confidence that the cross is not the end, that it does lead to new life. A new life that brings total transformation but one that might not be expected. One where the wounds received on our way to Calvary become signs of love and glory. In Christ’s way to Calvary, it is our sins that mark him, that brings him to the brink of death, and what lays him in the tomb. These marks were a sign of shame, destruction, and betrayal, but transformed by Christ are now signs of glory, love, and belief. The messiah that comes to us is a wounded Messiah, wounded for our salvation. So, too with us, our wounds will be, if transformed by Christ in this season, signs of glory, of love, and of belief. Our lives will then become the mission of Christ: to bring healing to those wounded by their crosses.

Take courage! Be on your way! Be transformed!

Question:

What wounds are you carrying that you need transformed? What is the cross you carry that is leading you to self-gift? How is Christ asking, on your way to Calvary, to be his missionary to those in need of a wounded Messiah?

Reflection by Fr. Etienne Huard, OSB