God forges community from the cross – Jn 19:25-27, Heb 5:7-9

First Sunday Mass homily, for the solemnity of our patroness, Our Lady of Sorrows.  St. Stanislaus Saturday night and Holy Cross parish Sunday morning.  Hebrews 5:7-9; John 19:25-27.

Goudou Goudou: that’s the word in Haitian Creole for ‘earthquake.’  Before January 2010, there was no word in Haitian Creole for earthquake.  That’s how dramatic a change the shaking earth spawned, that they needed a new word, even though the physical devastation we saw on the media left most of the world speechless.  I spent some time in Haiti last summer with my brothers in Holy Cross there and I saw a counter-image to what we had seen through the television.  I don’t want to in any way idealize or sugarcoat the destruction that earthquake wrought, but I want to be just as clear about what rose up when the buildings fell down.  I met people who were working together to rebuild not just buildings but lives; I could detail project after project, but what’s important is that each of them were driven by people working together, people moved by a more profound sense of mutual responsibility than I often see in more ‘developed’ nations, people who didn’t even know they were a community until disaster hit.  From the all too real cross of that earthquake, God forged community, God forged family.

God keeps doing that because God did that definitively on Calvary.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, but the world did not receive him.  The world crucified him.  Christ submitted to being lifted up on that cross, like the serpent on Moses’ staff, out of love for the world, to heal this world of isolation where people don’t receive each other, where Love is rejected, is crucified.  In John’s gospel, the first person to respond with faith to Jesus is his mother.  At the wedding at Cana, she submits to his will in obedience, even as her tells her “my hour has not yet come.”  Well, now: his hour has come.  At the foot of the cross, she stood at Jesus’ side during his hour, his time of being lifted up.  Once more, he uses that strange address, “woman.”  A new command: “behold you son.” Once more, she consents.  From that hour, because of that hour, the disciple and Jesus’ mother receive each other.  The world of isolation is conquered by Love on the Cross.  That hour of terrible glory changed the world.  From the disaster of the Cross a new family is born, a family we are invited into, the family of the Church, with Mary as our mother.

And here we are!  We are the Church, the family forged by Christ on the Cross!  We feel aftershocks of that cross whenever we stand by a sister or brother in need, in sorrow, in despair, trapped on their own cross.  To accompany someone suffering is to stand very close to Christ whose reverence to God expressed itself in loud cries and tears; Christ who was fully obedient to being human, who responded to a world of isolation with love, costly love. 

Heard by God, Hebrews assures us, he was saved, but not saved from death: through dying, rising and being exalted, he conquers death, he makes an instrument of brutal torture into the altar of our salvation.  And now, our forerunner in the faith, he beckons us home, to follow him together on the pilgrimage, a pilgrimage which doesn’t lead around suffering but through it to eternal glory.  Together we walk this pilgrimage, this Way of the Cross,, together with Mary by our side, a woman who knew much sorrow because she loved deeply.

That’s the great genius of devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows.  Mary knew much sorrow because she loved much.  She loved an infant, a boy, a youth, a man who was fully obedient to being human.  She nurtured him, protected him, taught him and at last let him go to fulfill his deadly vocation, all without leaving his side.  And when we need a mother’s tender care, she’s there for us too, all the while pointing to her son: “Do whatever he tells you.”  And when we need a mother’s prod, she’s there, pointing us to her son, to encounter Christ in our neighbors’ crosses we stand by, to let him form us into one community, one family, one Church from that cross. 

When we encounter the cross, we come very close to resurrection.  When we encounter grief, sickness, job loss, loneliness, when we listen to our neighbors’ cries, we hear resound the aftershocks of Christ’s reverent loud cries, cries to his Father, and we know we are hearing the cries of the one who is now our Savior.

This is a beautiful vocation, of a Church that doesn’t avoid suffering, but suffers together, that accompanies each other, that encounters Christ in each other’s suffering, that turns to God with loud cries in their need, hears the call louder and louder to become one family and walk together to live forever with our loving Savior.  But, I’m guessing there are at least some here who have been let down, who haven’t found grace in suffering, but have been left, painfully alone.  Maybe some have even suffered at the hands of the Church.  This beautiful image can seem so painfully far away at times, I know.  We’re not there yet.  We’re on pilgrimage and we’re not there yet.  But Christ is. 

If the Church were just another human support group, we wouldn’t be a very good one.  But we’re not.  Jesus forged this community from the world-changing cross on which he died, and then he rose!  We don’t always live up to our identity, but Christ is raising us up: us, the disciples he loves.