Dear Parishioners,

Today is the Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. So, I would like to take a moment to reflect on the meaning of this day.

It is fitting that in today’s Gospel reading, Our Lord tells His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him. He is teaching them that in order to be His follower they have to suffer as well. The Cross has a special place as the most common symbol for Christianity because it is the instru- ment God used to redeem us. If Our Lord wanted to, He could have saved us just by His word. He didn’t even need to become man in order to do it. But, God is His infinite wisdom knows that the crucifixion was the best way for us to be re- deemed. Grace is not cheap and easy. Redemp- tion without sacrifice would not make up for the injustice of sin. God was owed a sacrifice worth the offense. However, He also knew we couldn’t produce such a sacrifice. So, He gave us His son to represent us.

Even with this great example of God’s love, mercy and justice, we can easily forget how costly the cross really is. We can think of the crucifixion of Our Lord Jesus as something in the past that just had to happen. When that happens, we can take it for granted. We can even become presumptu- ous of our own salvation and forget that a real person died for our sins. That is why it is im- portant to look at the cross with the eyes of Mary.

When Mary looked at the Cross on Calvary, she looked at her Son with great love. She is the Im- maculate Conception and therefore able to love Our Lord with no selfishness or holding back. To see her Son die had to be a death to herself as well because she loved Him so much. She re- minds us that it is her Son that died and therefore we can never think of the cross as given, or easy or impersonal. Instead, we have a Savior who re- ally exists and we ought to love Him.

So, every Christian is called to embrace the cross of Christ. That means that we should accept suf- fering, love others until it hurts and take on per- sonal sacrifice for our good and the good of oth- ers. That is what it means to embrace the cross. In this life, we are trying to become more like Christ and that means we need to take on His suffering as well. No one did that better than the Blessed Virgin Mary and so we follow her exam- ple.

God Bless!

Fr. Carter