For Good Friday, pray this colloquy from The Spiritual Exercises 53. This is a contemporary paraphrase by David L. Fleming, SJ.I put myself before Jesus Christ our Lord, present before me on the cross.
I talk to him about how he creates because he loves and then he is born one like us out of love, so emptying himself as to pass from eternal life to death here in time, even death on a cross. By his response of love for God his Father, he dies for my sins.
I look to myself and ask—just letting the questions penetrate my being:
In the past, what response have I made to Christ?
How do I respond to Christ now?
What response should I make to Christ? As I look upon Jesus as he hangs upon the cross, I ponder whatever God may bring to my attention.
Image by carulmare under Creative Commons license.
I always tell those that their image in that decades old picture of them in their wedding dress (or whatever) is history too.
The Crucifix has always been deeply meaningful and moving to me, which has led to some “robust” conversations with Christians who prefer the image of the Cross because, “He is risen!”
I feel the same way as Marg. I have to remind myself to re-center. Thank God for this blog on my facebook! But this morning in my exercise class, a woman said, “Well, Easter is a kids holiday anyhow” My heart just sunk. I felt sorrow that this kind of sentiment exists. The blessing for me is that 10 years ago, this kind of comment would have rolled right by me, today it stuck. I thank God for that! But, I wish I would have had a gentle, meaningful, Jesuit-like zinger as a reply. But I was struck dumb….maybe that was a special grace. I carried that sorrow with me all morning and now I am directed to the crucified Christ. I am praying for the grace to sort this out today!
At least for me, I feel that I must constantly re-center myself in Christ. I would like my response to Christ to be more a natural part of my being rather than something that I must remember to do. How you live your life should be your response to Christ. Sometimes I feel that I fall short!
m.