Br. Jack Crowley

Luke 9:18-25

Our Gospel passage today features one of my favorite words that Jesus uses. That word is “daily.” Jesus tells his disciples that they must take up their cross daily and follow him. Jesus could have said, take up your cross when you are ready or take up your cross when the time is right, but instead, Jesus says plainly, take up your cross daily.

I always appreciate how Jesus does not sugarcoat the truth. The daily grind of taking up our cross is something we all know too well. We each have our own version of this. Each day’s cross carries its own little splinters, its own knots in the wood, and it can rub us the wrong way on different days. In my own experience, how I carry the cross one day doesn’t always translate to how I must carry the cross the next day. In other words, I’m relearning or remembering how to take up my cross each day, but with a slightly different accent or technique each time.

In this season of Lent, we have forty daily reminders of the cross we must bear. Forty daily reminders that we never really know for sure what’s going to happen when we put that cross on our back and set out into the desert. Sure, we have plans and disciplines and boundaries and routines, yet the weight of the cross has its way on all of them.

The good news is that we know six weeks from today will be Maundy Thursday. We’ll gather here and wash away the sands from the desert of Lent in warm water. Our feet will be toweled off, and we will gladly kneel to wash the feet of another. We all know our journey with the cross will have a glorious, healing, and cleansing ending.

Yet, in the meantime, there is still our daily cross. As sure as the sun rises, our cross will be there waiting for us when we wake up in the morning. Remember that we are not carrying our cross for no reason or without direction; as Jesus said, we take up our cross and follow him. We follow Jesus. We are not walking aimlessly in the desert; we are following Jesus. We are answering his beloved invitation to come and see.

I wish you all a glorious Lenten season. Amen.