Spirit Matters: Looking at the crucifixion through the lens of love

By the time most of you read this week’s column, the somber remembrance of Good Friday will have given way to the mournful grief of Holy Saturday or the renewed hope of Easter Sunday.

Each of these days, as parts of the greater symphony of God’s active presence in the world, has their own distinct mood. And if you have observed them all your life, then you likely feel similar sentiments each year, amplified by your previous experiences observing these most holy of days.

The daily reflection this Good Friday morning from the Center for Action and Contemplation, founded by Richard Rohr, invites readers to “pray for softened hearts.” In his writings, Rohr has a way of teaching us to look at our spiritual lives through a kaleidoscopic lens.

“The crucifixion of Jesus is the preeminent example of God’s love reaching out to us. It is at the same moment the worst and best thing in human history…

“On the cross, the Franciscans believed, God was ‘spilling blood’ to reach out to us! This is a sea change in consciousness. The cross, instead of being a transaction, was seen as a dramatic demonstration of God’s outpouring love, meant to utterly shock the heart and turn it back toward trust and love of the creator.

“I believe that the cross is an image for our own time and every time: We are invited to gaze upon the image of the crucified Jesus to soften our hearts toward all suffering. The cross beckons us to what we would call ‘grief work,’ holding the mystery of pain, looking right at it and learning from it. With softened hearts, God leads us to an uncanny and newfound compassion and understanding.”

Many of us hold our beliefs etched in stone, so fearful of anything that threatens those beliefs that we hold onto those stones for dear life. Should anyone suggest a different understanding, we feel threatened, lash out and question the validity of their faith.

Meanwhile, by rigidly clinging to our beliefs with no room for ambiguity, we could be depriving ourselves of a deeper, more all-encompassing experience of the love of God in our lives.

What if we turned the lens on the often-guilt-ridden narrative around Jesus Christ’s passion and death? Instead of focusing on our role as depraved, ungrateful sinners, what if we looked through the lens of that same crucifixion and the shedding of Jesus’s blood “as a dramatic demonstration of God’s outpouring love, meant to utterly shock the heart and turn it back toward trust and love of the creator”?

How might your spiritual life change if you contemplated the blood of that God-man perpetually spilling itself into your heart and the hearts of those near and far, softening them back into their originally intended nature?

This perpetual spilling of the blood is what Catholics celebrate at every Mass. It is not that we believe Christ’s crucifixion didn’t accomplish once for all God’s greatest act of mercy. Rather, it is a consistent taking part in the fruits of what that blood symbolizes and its ability to transform our hearts from the inside out.

Because although we may profess belief in Christ, every one of us has hardened hearts to one degree or another. We think we know it all, when God doesn’t really care what we know, as much as how deeply we surrender our hearts to God’s compassionate, merciful and softening love, and demonstrate that softening love in the way we look upon and treat one another.

In the future, when you read and reflect upon the events of Holy Week, try experiencing it as one being lavishly submerged in the blood of Christ, which is nothing more and nothing less than love itself.

Then, watch and see how your heart transforms into one like the heart of Christ.

SPIRIT MATTERS is a weekly column by Jerrilyn Zavada Novak that examines experiences common to the human spirit. Contact her at jzblue33@yahoo.com.