Love and Torture.

During my first semester of college (which seems like it was yesterday), one of my favorite professors told me that she was a Methodist.

Now, she didn’t just come out of nowhere and say, “Tony, I’m a Methodist.” That’s just…awkward.

Looking back, I’m not exactly sure how it came up. She knew that I was in the seminary, and became comfortable discussing what everyone says we shouldn’t in polite society—religion. I loved it.

I loved it because sometimes, especially in our relationships with people of other religious traditions, particularly among Christians, we have no idea what the other person’s faith tradition actually believes. We focus on what divides us rather than what unites us, which is what I see as a reason that we don’t move closer to a more open dialogue with the goal of together journeying toward the Truth that is Jesus Christ.

I enjoyed talking with this particular professor, because through those conversations, we were able to come to a better understanding of what the other person actually believed. This post isn’t about ecumenical dialogue, although that itself is indeed an important topic. I promise, though, I am getting to a point. I’m just extroverted and long-winded.

One thing that struck me in those conversations was something that my professor simply could not wrap her mind around—why do Catholics have crucifixes everywhere? We were at a Catholic university, so naturally, there were crucifixes all over the place. In her church, they did indeed have crosses, but they would never go so far as to place an image of Christ’s body on it, and she simply couldn’t understand why on earth we would.

Hobby Lobby.

I graduated from college in May, meaning that those conversations with my professor took place four years ago. Recently, though, thoughts about that topic came back to mind when I was in a Hobby Lobby store.

A few weeks ago, I went to visit one of my friends from college. I hadn’t had the chance to see her since we graduated, so I was very excited to catch up. Part of our time was spent at a Hobby Lobby, so that she could pick up a few things for a project she was working on. As we were winding through the aisles in pursuit of paints and stencils, we came upon a rather large display of crosses. Some were plain, while others were very ornate—some even had quotes or references to Biblical passages on them. Apparently, all of those crosses were there to create what has become the latest trend in the Christian world—a cross wall. It is what is sounds like: a wall covered in crosses.

My friend told me that this reminded her of the last time she came into this store. The only crucifixes they sell are part of a Rosary making kit. One of these small crucifixes had fallen out of its packaging, and was on the floor near my friend. Another lady picked it up and asked if it belonged to her. When my friend asked what it was before seeing it, the other lady handed it to her and responded, “It’s a cross with Jesus still on it.”

Discomfort.

In a way, it is easy to see why people wouldn’t like seeing “a cross with Jesus still on it.” First of all, in general, people don’t like to think or talk about death. I recently heard that it used to be a tradition for Catholics to pray for “a happy death,” which I have literally never heard of before. So, why would someone want to look at an image of a dead person hanging on their wall? Not only that, but crucifixion was a gruesome form of execution in the Roman Empire—a crucifixion scene would surely not have been prominently displayed in homes and churches. It was the death of a criminal—there was nothing admirable about it.

That stuff makes us uncomfortable, and that is a feeling that we don’t enjoy. Looking at the One who we believe to be the Second Person of the Trinity—the One who was both fully human and fully divine—nailed to a cross? No thanks.

Then there’s the whole issue of the Resurrection. If Christ conquered death and rose from the grave, then why would we want to constantly see His death—why not His resurrection?

Basically, when it comes to all of this—why are Catholics so weird?

…ich mache alles neu.

I’ll be honest—I made the title of this section German so that I could feel like my German minor I did in college is useful. Don’t judge me—I’m bilingual.

In case you aren’t fortunate enough to speak German, the translation is, “I make all things new.” It comes from the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation. In this particular section, John is writing of seeing the new Heaven and the new Earth. John heard this phrase coming from the One seated on the throne… “Behold, I make all things new.”

My mind was puzzled, though. This section of Revelation is the only place in Scripture where the phrase, “I make all things new” appears (the internet is amazing, y’all). Yet, I was certain that I had heard it somewhere else. After a little thinking, I finally figured it out: I remembered hearing this phrase during the film The Passion of the Christ.

In the scene I’m speaking of, Christ is on His way to His crucifixion. Meanwhile, the Virgin Mary and the apostle John are apart from the crowd, clearly distraught. Jesus falls, and Mary has a flashback to Him falling as a child, and her running to Him. As she now runs to her child on His way to die, she does the same thing that she did before—she holds Him and says, "I'm here!" Jesus looks her in the eye, touches her face, and says, “See mother, I make all things new.” He then gathers the strength to stand up, picks up His cross, and continues His journey.

I think this scene tells us two things.

First, it reveals the important role that Mary plays in our lives. Both times that Mary ran to Jesus in this particular scene, she says to Him, “I’m here!” Later, on the cross, Jesus would give Mary to all of us as our Mother. So, in the same way, when we fall, Mary runs to us and says, “I’m here!” She won’t leave our side. She wants to help us, just as any mother would—all we need to do is ask for her help. This reminds me of a quote from Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, who said, “If you ever feel distressed during your day, call upon our Lady. Just say this simple prayer: ‘Mary, Mother of Jesus, please be a mother to me now.’ This prayer has never failed me.”

Secondly, Christ says what the point of this section is about—“See mother, I make all things new.” He didn’t say this in what we would consider a particularly glorious or proud moment. He didn’t say it when He changed the water into wine at Cana, or when He healed the blind man, or even when He fed the multitudes with a few loaves of bread and some fish. Rather, He says it now, as He is on the ground, falling from the weight of the cross He bears as He walks toward His death.

Jesus makes all things new—He transforms everything—with Him, nothing can ever be the same. He said, “I make all things new” while He was on His way to die, because He indeed was doing what He was saying—He was transforming something horrific into something heroic. He was giving something new meaning.

Torturous Love.

In the Roman world, the cross was a torture device. It was meant to torture, and eventually kill, those who were placed upon it.

But, remember, in The Passion of the Christ, Jesus said He was going to make all things new to His mother as He was grasping the wood of the cross. This is because He was transforming it. This is honestly why sometimes, I have trouble with the image of a plain cross—one without Christ—because without Christ, the cross was a mere device of torture and death, but with Christ, it becomes an instrument of mercy and salvation. His death is why the cross is so important to us now—because we know that His death changed everything.

This isn’t to deny the importance of the Resurrection. Some claim that because we have the crucifix, we say it is more important than the Resurrection. Saint John Paul II said that this couldn’t be further from the truth—he referred to us an “an Easter people.” This reminds me of a retreat program that I am involved with in my Archdiocese. Each day has a different “theme.” The first day is called “Die Day,” and the second day is called “Rise Day.” This may seem overly simple, but really, it reveals a truth about our faith and why we remember the crucifixion—because without the Cross, there can be no Resurrection. One of the arguments for the credibility of the Resurrection is that it has always been proclaimed together with the Cross.

The strangest thing, though, is that He didn’t have to do any of it. During His crucifixion, people mocking Jesus said that if he was really the Son of God, then He could have saved Himself and came down off of the Cross. While He indeed could have done that, He didn’t—because He was in love.

Love is a crazy thing. A couple of months ago, I had the honor of speaking at all of the Masses at my home parish for our diocesan appeal and the seminarian education fund. When I was thinking of what to say about my experience and about vocations, the same thing that I said in the diocesan appeal video came to mind—love. In our world, love truly is counter-cultural, because love calls us outside of ourselves. Love compels us to want nothing but the best, not for ourselves, but for someone else. In a culture that says we should think of nothing but ourselves, our interests, and our pleasures, and especially preaches that gospel of deceit to the people of my generation—authentic love is simply…hard to wrap our minds around.

The society that my generation has come of age in is one that needs authentic love, and needs it desperately. We live in a world where we’ve become all but desensitized to the all-too-common event of a person walking into a building with a gun and slaughtering innocent people. Hearing of another terrorist attack somewhere in the world is a regular piece of news. When we think of love, the people of my generation are tempted to believe that it exists only within the confines of a bedroom with someone they may not even really know.

Then, there’s Jesus.

I’m convinced that it was His love that led Him to the cross. I’m convinced that love is what led Him to a torture and death that He didn’t have to endure. I’m convinced that it was love that caused Him to say, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do,” not about the soldiers who nailed Him to the cross, but about each of us, who every time we choose sin over Him, join the crowds in shouting “Crucify Him!” I’m convinced that as the thorns of His crown pressed into His head, that as each breath became more and more difficult, I crossed his mind—you crossed His mind—and out of nothing more than love, He kept going. I’m convinced that it was love that made Him say “Behold your Mother” right before He died—giving us all the gift of Mary, who will always run to us in our time of need. I’m convinced that love is the reason that three days later, the stone was rolled away, the tomb found empty, and death destroyed forever.

With the Cross, Jesus also teaches us an important lesson—that love isn’t easy. In some ways, love can be a cross—it can feel torturous—because we have to think of someone other than ourselves in a world that tells us its wrong to do so. I don’t imagine it was easy for Jesus to stand there and hear the people that He loved shout “Crucify Him!” over and over again. I don’t imagine it was easy to be forced to carry His own instrument of death through crowded streets. I don’t imagine it was easy to encounter his mother in the state He was in. I don’t imagine it was easy for Him to die although He did no wrong. But He did it, because He was in love.

Being Loved.

One of the challenges about love is that in order for us to give love, we must first have an experience of it. As the old adage goes, “you can’t give what you don’t have.” Part of that challenge for many of us, myself included, is giving ourselves permission to experience love. Sometimes we get so caught up in what’s wrong with us—in the ways we aren’t perfect—in the ways that we’re allegedly disappointments—in the hardships and tragedies of life—in the flaws that make us human—that we are convinced that we simply aren’t loveable.

That’s a lie.

I know it’s a lie, because it’s something that I believed. It’s something that I’ve found to be so easy to get caught up in, yet so difficult to see through and overcome. But, in some of the most difficult and trying moments of my life, when there seemed to be nothing left, there was love. There was no choice but to be loved.

I learned this lesson when I was thirteen years old. My older brother—the one closest in age to me, and the only one that I remember being in the house when I was growing up—took his own life. I’ve written about my brother’s death and the impact that it had on my life here.

Basically, though, when my brother died, my world stopped turning. I ended up angry with God. It seems odd to be angry with God, because, you know—He’s God. He’s kind of a big deal—we aren’t really supposed to be angry with Him, right?

Experiencing the loss of my brother and all the events that followed essentially called into question God’s love. I wasn’t quite sure He actually loved my family or me. I’ll never forget what happened one day a few months after my brother’s death.

I was in my room, cleaning. It had been a rough couple of days. In the midst of organizing my room, I found a box. There was nothing really different about it, but something compelled me to open it. Inside were a bunch of papers that I began to look through. Eventually, I realized that the box had within it several letters.

My brother spent the last several years of his life behind bars. No, I don’t know what he did, and I never will. I’ve asked not to know, and I don’t think asking my parents what their dead son did to end up in the slammer is very tactful. Some have challenged me and believe that I need to find out what it was. The way I see it: he’s dead, and knowing what he did isn’t going to make him suddenly be not dead. There’s no opportunity to get to know him more, and there’s only a few memories I have which are themselves fading the older I get. I’d rather remember what I remember. If you don’t agree with it…well…to be honest, I don’t really care.

As I reread those letters from my brother that day, tears welled up in my eyes, because I realized that although he was gone, he was still teaching me lessons, like any big sibling should. I realized that my brother became a different man behind bars, and all he wanted to do was make sure that his little brother used his days on earth for better things than he did. Those lessons he penned to me, enclosed in an envelope identifying him as a five-digit number, are the lessons that have ultimately contributed to who I am today.

After that moment, things began to change. I don’t believe that things like that happen accidentally. I believe that me finding those letters was meant to happen. In that moment, I realized that my brother’s life indeed had purpose. I realized that God didn’t hate me, or my family. I realized that in this—the darkest moment of my short life—His love was all that I had—and I needed to take advantage of it. When I did, my life changed forever.

My life changed forever, because I realized the importance of God’s love. I realized that when Christ hung on the cross, He did it because He loved me—because He loved my brother—because He loved my family. I realized that without His love, to put it bluntly, life sucked. I took my faith more seriously, and without my faith, I don’t know where I would be or who I would be. But what I do know is this—without my faith, I wouldn’t be who I am really meant to be.

You think this recognition of God’s love is something that I would never forget—well, in some ways, I did. Hey, I’m a human being—give me a break.

I was raised by a single father (yes, you read that correctly), and although I love my mother dearly, and she has always been an important part of my life, it’s always been me and dad from day one.

About forty years ago, my dad, who was a smoker—because just about everyone forty years ago was a smoker—coughed up blood. He threw out his pack of cigarettes and never smoked again.

About ten years ago, my dad had a routine scan of his chest done (I think for something monitoring his heart disease) and a spot was found on his lung. It was cancer. Thankfully, it didn’t spread and that part of his lung was successfully removed. Life went back to normal.

Late last year, my dad called me as I was walking across my university’s campus. They found another spot. I was devastated. When they found out it was cancer again, I was even more devastated. When we were told that the cancer had spread—I didn’t know what to do.

When dad’s surgeon broke the news, I didn’t know what to do. I went outside of the consultation room with tears pouring down my face and snot running out of my nose like horses breaking out of the gates on Derby Day. I asked the receptionist to take me to the chapel. It was kind of odd, because the hospital is Jewish. So, the chapel had no tabernacle—no Eucharist—just a big box with the Torah scroll. But, it didn’t matter—it was a chapel and I wanted to be in God’s presence. I did all I could. I sat on the floor of that chapel in front of the Torah and cried my eyes out. I screamed to God how angry I was at Him. Why was this happening to us again? My dad is such a good man—why does he have to go through such suffering? He means the world to me—why did I have to watch this unfold?

I told God that I knew He still loved me, but I didn’t feel it. I wasn’t sure how my faith would make it through this. I sat on the floor of that chapel and begged Him to open the flood gates and drown me in His love, because I knew from experience that it was the only thing that would get me through the day, let alone whatever the future would hold. I knew it was His love that would be the only thing to sustain me taking care of dad—it would be the only thing to take care of him.

God did just that.

He did it when I wasn’t able to reach my mother, so I called my associate vocation director. She stayed on the phone with me and calmed me down. When the office closed, she drove to the hospital and sat with me and my dad for hours, when she could have been at home with her family.

He did it when my best friend was constantly there for me. He was texting me and answering phone calls the entire time to talk me through everything—to tell me I could keep going and keep being strong for dad. When dad would hit a rough patch, he would drop everything and run to the chapel to pray for him. One day, I went to bed physically and mentally exhausted, and extremely depressed. I woke up the next day to a beautiful message—a poem—that to this day, still brings tears to my eyes. It was amazing.

He did it when my cellphone rang and it was the Archbishop. Archbishop is seriously the busiest person that I know. He talked to me long enough to make me wonder what meeting he cancelled to carve out that time for me. He wanted me to know that he cared about me and my family. He wanted to be a pastor.

He did it the next day, when the receptionist that took me to the chapel the day before saw me in the hospital cafeteria. She got up from her table and sate and ate with me, although I was a complete stranger. She hugged me and let me know that she cared—that it was more than just her job.

He did it when my dad asked for his rosary. Dad was in indescribable pain, and he felt his way to the crucifix on his rosary and said, “If He can do that, I can do this.” He knew that his strength was going to come from the ultimate source of love—Christ crucified.

And that was just within the first couple of days of this journey.

My dad’s fight with cancer is ongoing, and I’m continually astounded by the love that God has shown us. In both of these difficult moments of life, my brother’s death and my dad’s illness, God has used other people to reveal His love. All of these people had something in common—they all did things that are objectively quite small, yet were all a profound experience of God’s love. It’s the small things we do that show the concrete reality of His love. It is allowing ourselves to be loved by small acts such as these that teach us how to then in turn share that love with others.

Merciful Love and Credibility.

To me, that’s what the Year of Mercy is all about—receiving and sharing God’s love. Pope Francis described mercy as “opening our hearts to being loved forever despite our sinfulness.” (Misericordiae Vultus, 2) Mercy and love, then, go hand in hand.

The importance of love in the life of the Church isn’t a new idea, though. Pope Benedict XVI said, “The entire activity of the Church is an expression of a love that seeks the good of man.” (Deus Caritas Est, 19) In recent years, a primary focus of the Church has been the new evangelization, even involving a Synod of Bishops on the topic. Even in these efforts, love is crucial; “The primary reason for evangelizing is the love of Jesus which we have received, the experience of salvation which urges us to ever greater love of Him.” (Evangelii Gaudium, 264)

Speaking of evangelization; while it is an important work, it is also one that needs support. In a world dominated by secularism, everything presented to man today needs with it the establishment of credibility. If we as a Church are to evangelize without also establishing the credibility of our faith, well, we’re wasting our time and energy.

Hans Urs von Balthasar was a twentieth century Swiss theologian, is arguably the most important theologian of our times, and wrote quite a bit of confusing theology (confusing at least to first year theology students). He recognized the need to establish credibility for the faith. To make a long story short, in working to establish credibility, he concludes that it can only be done through the love of God.

Part of the reason that Balthasar believes that love establishes the credibility of our faith is because of its unique nature. When placed in relation to other religious traditions, Christianity is unique because of love. “If the fundamental word of the Logos were not love—and, indeed absolute (unconditional) and therefore utterly free love, because it is a word that reveals God—then the Christian Logos would have to stand as one of a series with the logoi of other religious wisdom traditions.” (Balthasar, Love Alone is Credible). This idea was reinforced by Pope Francis when he proclaimed the Year of Mercy, saying, “The Church feels the urgent need to proclaim God’s mercy. Her life is authentic and credible only when she becomes a convincing herald of mercy.” (Misericordiae Vultus, 25)

For Balthasar, this love is ultimately shown in the Cross of Christ. The Cross illuminates everything—the love of Christ on the Cross enlightens our sense of the world. Really, the Cross is transformative. The Cross as a sign of love and mercy was the focus of Pope Francis’ address at the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum on Good Friday in 2014. He said:

God placed on Jesus’ Cross all the weight of our sins, all the injustices perpetrated by every Cain against his brother, all the bitterness of the betrayal by Judas and by Peter, all the vanity of tyrants, all the arrogance of false friends. It was a heavy Cross, like night experienced by abandoned people, heavy like the death of loved ones, heavy because it carries all the ugliness of evil. However, the Cross is also glorious like the dawn after a long night, for it represents all the love of God, which is greater than our iniquities and our betrayals. In the Cross we see the monstrosity of man, when he allows evil to guide him; but we also see the immensity of the mercy of God, who does no treat us according to our sins, but according to His mercy.

This is really the answer to my professor’s question—Why do Catholics have crucifixes everywhere? Catholics have crucifixes not because we enjoy looking at a dead guy hanging on our wall, but because we need to be reminded of the greatest act of love the world will never know—we need to be reminded of the love that changes everything.

Christmas.

We are nearing the end of the Advent season, and Christmas is only hours away. Why, then, would I be writing about the Cross at a time like this? Well, it is because I think that they are related.

Christmas and the Cross are related to one another in that they both find their foundation in indescribable love. Both events involve God’s kenosis, or emptying of Himself. With Christmas, we remember God emptying Himself and taking on human flesh. With the Cross, God emptied Himself in dying for our sins. In both events, we remember life. With Christmas, we remember the Christ child being born in a cave as new life entering the world…a life that would ultimately result in His death on the Cross, an event that presents us with the opportunity of new life—eternal life…an event that would result in Christ being brought back to a cave—His tomb, where He would defeat death in His Resurrection.

In his book, Blessed are the Bored in Spirit, Mark Hart, a popular Catholic speaker known as the “Bible Geek,” wrote: “How divine that the same eyes which welled with joyful tears one starry night in Bethlehem also shed the broken tears of a widowed mother holding the same blessed Body years later. The only thing separating the Nativity from the Pieta is time and perspective.”

Christmas seems to always be a time to reflect—to look back on what has happened over the course of the past year. For me, a lot has happened—I’ve graduated college, moved on to major seminary, walked with my family and my dad through his battle with cancer, and so much more. It’s been a year of transitions and challenges…and sometimes, annoyances. Yet, when the year gets to this point, as the days become colder (unless you live in Kentucky where its supposed to be 70 on Christmas Eve…I’m not joking) and tiny lights lining houses break through the darkness of the night, I can’t help but be thankful. I can’t help but be thankful for the love of God that I’ve experienced, especially during this past year…I can’t help but be thankful that God loved us so much that He was willing to come among us to live, and to die, to give us the chance at eternal happiness with Him in Heaven. I can’t help but be thankful for Christmas and the Cross.

During this Christmas season…during this Year of Mercy…may we remember this, and be thankful for the unfathomable love of God. May we make room in the inns of our hearts to welcome Christ, who will come, if we let Him, to cast out darkness and bring His radiant light. Let’s not only be thankful for the love and mercy of God, though—let’s share it with others! As Saint John Paul II said, “This is no time to be ashamed of the Gospel, it is time to preach it from the rooftops!”

In all things, may God be glorified. Amen.