Now listen to this:
The merit of crosses does not consist of their weight, but in the manner in which they are borne. (A Year With The Saints, p. 115)
Does that sound like a strange notion? "Kiss frequently the crosses which the Lord sends you." If we can get beyond the strangeness of the image — we will discover the truth that we are to welcome the suffering that comes into our lives as an invitation to love and trust God more. And to make our suffering an extension of the suffering of Christ.
What cross in your life do you need to kiss? I know some of them because you have asked me to pray for you:
- the cross you bear for a child caught in the chains of a destructive addiction
- disabled parents for whom you are having to care
- an unsatisfying job that is apparently the only means of survival for your family while you are here at seminary
- being a single parent because an irresponsible, uncaring spouse left you to go his selfish way
- the call to serve the poor
- a life of chastity as a single person
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What cross in your life to you need to kiss?
The big question is: are we willing to give ourselves for the sake of others and for the world? As the bread and wine of holy communion is the body of Christ broken for us and His blood poured out on our behalf — so Christ would want us to be the bread broken for the sake of the world and the blood poured out for the salvation of others.
That can't happen, my friends, without a willingness to suffer on the part of Christians.
Some of you have heard me tell stories of Christians that we have come to know in Eastern Europe — who were a part of the Soviet Union — who remained faithful and played such a powerful role in keeping the Christian witness alive in that godless, oppressive, communist regime. Some of those folks are in Czechoslovakia and I've had a great time sharing fellowship with them. One of the persons in Czechoslovakia that I've wanted to meet — but never had the opportunity — is Vaclav Maly. He was the Catholic priest who in 1981 was defrocked for preaching the gospel and dispatched by the communists to clean the toilets in the subway system of Prague.
On Christmas Eve, in 1989, when the crowds began to move out into the streets, when it looked like, finally, the communist power structure was going to be overturned, the crowd started chanting, "Maly! Maly!" Maly was doing the job he had been condemned to — cleaning the toilets. So, up out of the subway Vaclav Maly, the defrocked priest, came. He led the crowd down to the main square of Old Prague. The New York Times told the story. Eight hundred thousand people gathered around while Maly administered the service and offered forgiveness to all the communists. All they had to do was come forward and repent — and they did it, by the hundreds!