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PART II
14. THE CROSS AND THE
LOVING GAZE OF JESUS
“Look steadfastly upon the Crucified,
who invites you to follow him in so marked a way."
(
A powerful way to pray, which
anyone can do: child, adult, literate or illiterate of whom there are millions,
is to follow a favorite recommendation of Pope Francis: allow oneself to be
gazed upon by Jesus and Mary. This is a truly powerful and a very personal way
to relate to Christ, his mother Mary, or any of our favorite saints. There are
those who scoff at this way of prayer as being primitive and may even say: they
should be reading the Bible instead. Well that is very helpful and meaningful,
if one can read, but it is unrealistic to expect that from everyone. Illiterate
people may hear the Scripture when at mass or having it read to them, though
many illiterate people live in places so remote, without any form of transport,
that they are lucky to see a priest once or twice in a lifetime or not at all.
Or they may see a priest once a year, during a yearly pilgrimage of several
days journey on foot, to get to the novena and/or patron feast of their parish.
I have been involved in these situations in my years as a missionary in
Let us not
be quick to describe as superstition or paganism certain religious practices
that arise spontaneously from the life of peoples. Rather, we ought to know how
to distinguish the wheat growing alongside the tares, for “popular piety can
enable us to see how the faith, once received, becomes embodied in a culture and
is constantly passed on”.
(Evangelii Gaudium # 123)
A missionary
of souls will try to discover the legitimate needs and concerns that seek an
outlet in at times imperfect, partial or mistaken religious expressions, and
will attempt to respond to them with an inculturated
spirituality. (Querida Amazonia # 78, 79)
Pope Francis, and all of us
members of the Argentine Church went through a common experience, during a
period after the Vatican Council II, during the 70's, when Popular Religiosity
was re-discovered to have its spiritual value, after a movement in the Church
among progressives, who had immediately after the Council, had come to look
down on it as too out-of-sync with the new period in the Church. In my article
for Horizon Magazine I said:
In the early 1970’s
the Church in Argentina became aware that there seemed to be two parallel
manifestations of faith going on side-by-side: one was the official
liturgy of the Church and the other was the crowds in the Church, who expressed
their faith to a large extent through Popular
Religiosity, be it through pilgrimages to shrines, processions, novenas,
recitation of the rosary…
The question
came about: how can we bridge these two expressions of faith and how can we
re-evangelize our people to deepen their faith through these popular devotions.
So a movement arose in an effort to bridge these differences which also helped
to a certain degree to heal the conflicting polarization at that time between
conservatives and progressives within the Church. A pilgrimage for instance to
the Marian shrine of Our Lady of Luján, a 70 km.(45
miles) walk from the shrine of St. Cayetano in Buenos
Aires, became a symbol of our pilgrimage on earth toward our eternal home in
heaven. I partook once in the youth
pilgrimage to Lujan involving around one million young people. The year of Pope
Francis election, I read that there were around two million young people in
that pilgrimage that year. At the shrine itself of San Cayetano,
where people flocked in droves every month, especially on the 7th
August, people were encouraged to replace offering candles for food for the
most needy in the country. The idea behind this was, as we ask St. Cayetano, patron of work and food, to intercede for our
needs, we can start by helping others in need with an offering. These goods
were then sent to the poorest diocese in the country. I myself used to “missionize” the novenas, so
to say; I would preach the novena in the context of a mission. (Gibson-Horizon-Spring 2016)
While I have constantly based
my reflections on the Christ, grounded in the Scriptures, other elements have
been important, like contemplating nature and listening to meaningful religious
music, like that of Taizé. But one of my favorite
ways of praying is with the help of meaningful images that help me connect with
whom they represent, in a heart-to-heart relationship.
As mentioned in Part I, when
I was 14 years old, I would pray every night before the images of Jesus on the
Cross and the Sorrowful Mother, while reciting the "Stabat
Mater" in English, not realizing at that time, that it was a traditional
prayer/hymn in the Church. This helped me create a very strong bond with Jesus
and Mary with my willingness to suffer at their side. In fact, with this
background, it prepared me to give a prompt yes to my calling to the
priesthood, even if I had a brief struggle with "Why me?…let
others do that". I said to myself then, if everyone reacted that way,
there would be no priests…yes, I realized it would mean a sacrifice, as I was
looking forward to getting married, have a large family, and to be a pilot or
architect. So I did accept the call, and immediately was filled with joy.
Interestingly enough, it was Pentecost Sunday, late at night and at around the
same time St. John
XXIII (click link to view) was dying on
the 3rd June, 1963. Years later, I read that this pope, who was instrumental in
bringing great reforms in the Church, when convoking the II Vatican Council,
was praying the rosary on his death bed for priestly vocations. No wonder I
have always felt very connected to him.
Yes, gazing on one's favorite
images, where the compassion, gentleness, tenderness, patience, fortitude,
heroism, peacefulness in the midst of suffering all exude from these images
along with other virtues, fills one's heart and helps one to be transformed
into being like them.
A Spaniard, Fr. Cué, SJ, published some interesting meditations on a
discovered broken crucifix without a face, one arm and no cross, as a
consequence of a bombardment during the 2nd World War. I found his meditations
very helpful. In one meditation, he reacted to people having favorite images of
Christ on the Cross. He imagined Jesus telling us to imagine the face of our
worse enemy and to place it mentally on the missing face of Jesus, and then
kiss his feet. (Cué -1963) I agree that this can be a
very powerful way of helping us forgive our enemies or those whom we don't warm
up to. However, the other way is equally valid for me, as it helps in building
up our relationship with God. Images and pictures, like photographs, help us
feel close to those whom we love and admire. After all, we are human beings
that relate to others and the world with our senses. Jesus, aware of this, transmits
his saving grace through visible, tangible elements like water, bread, wine,
oil…These images are mediations of grace, not an end in themselves, which
otherwise would be idolatry. The biggest idol of all times though is money… we
can come to serve it at the expense of others… it is no longer a medium to help
us live and share with others, but an end unto itself. As Jesus warns us: we
cannot serve God and mammon at the same time
"No one can serve two masters. He
will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the
other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Matthew 6:24)
15. THE CROSS AND THE EUCHARIST
