Also known as: Saying goodbye to my favorite month with love
Look, March is almost over. I meant to blog more, but life just got in the way so I’m back only now after posting about my birthday.
Yesterday I finished rereading one of my favorite books, May Crowning, Mass and Merton: 50 Reasons I Love Being Catholic by Liz Kelly. I remember loving this solely because it was a book about Catholicism and it made my appreciate my faith more. The last time I read this was 2009, and I admit to being a little bit shaky with my faith back then. I’ve moved past from that part of my life, and I’d like to believe that I am better now. Reading the book this time around was different, because I think I got it a bit better now than then.
It’s also these times I believe that God sends affirmations to me about some things I am determined to live out. At the very end of the book, I ran across some passages about love that totally supported why I chose LOVE as my word for 2012.
The aspect of the cross that stops me short is that, throughout his passion and death, Christ was himself. He never tried to be anything else, never tried to please anyone, never tried to run away, never wavered from the truth; he only occupied himself completely and authentically with his own calling. He just loved, no matter what the outcome; just loved because that is what he was created to do. The miracle of the cross is that God loves anyway, no matter what the result, no matter our choice, no matter the flighty vacillations of the sometimes fickle human heart — loving one minute, resenting the next, indifferent or self-involved in still the next. Instead, he flings the door to his very sacred heart wide, wide, and invites all to enter and make themselves at home…
Christ’s suffering counts for something the most important things, the essential things. It counts for grace and for mercy. It counts for authenticity and for resurrection from our ruination and into who we truly are: children of light. It counts for being genuine and honest. It counts for love.
As my faith grows up within me, more and more the prayer I once clung to, “God remove my pain,” becomes “If I must experience this suffering, then please let it count for something. Just don’t let it go to waste.” When I can open my heart and love anyway, no matter the outcome, no matter the choices of people around me, no matter the risk involved, I become more powerful in heaven’s kingdom than any army, any fear, any cruelty or any rejection. Instead, those things are swallowed up whole and lost in grace and mercy. I find that when they are awash in love, they’re not such bitter pills after all.
I want to love anyway, to love because that’s what I was created to do. And I can trust that God will never let any potential resulting suffering go to waste if I’m doing that. It will always count, and that’s a promise. Even when I don’t know it; even when I can’t feel it. And that gives me courage, courage to love again, to love anyway.
I don’t understand the cross. I don’t believe understanding it is the point, or even necessarily a very worthy or interesting goal. But I think accepting it is — accepting that we were created to love no matter the outcome. The cross is God’s promise to love us, no matter what. And deep in my spirit where the most essential parts of me are anchored, there is a knowing, growing and resonant and burning with an eternal ache that tells me: the cross counts. It matters. It counts for grace and mercy. It counts for love.
– May Crowning, Mass and Merton: 50 Reasons I Love Being Catholic by Liz Kelly (pp. 269-270)
The cross counts for love. What a beautiful way to put things in perspective. I will never understand it, but even so, what I can do is to love anyway no matter what the outcome and trust that that is enough.
March is ending, but we’ve got a month full of new possibilities ahead of us. :)
