A Lenten Moment

Restless, during a morning meditation this Lent, a poignant memory popped into my reflection and changed my prayer.  In my younger years as a guidance counselor, I sometimes visited a classroom to deliver a message or speak to a student.  One morning, as I quietly opened the door to the woodworking class, I was taken aback by the hush in the room and the alluring scent of sawdust and wood shavings as the students went calmly about their projects.

In the centre of the classroom, clamped to a large table, stood a life-sized, maple cross made in the workshop and destined to have a permanent place in the school’s front entrance.  As I surveyed the peaceful scene, a young student wearing his white shirt and dark pants quietly walked to the large cross, put his back to it and measured himself upon it.  He paused for a short time and silently walked back to his work.  Only I witnessed the moving experience and was awed and overcome with love. As is often the case, so much of what one feels is left unspoken.

Image: Unsplash/Aaron Burden

As my mind returned to my meditation, the long-ago memory provided a deep grace in my day.  How blessed were those students to have that old rugged cross in their midst during those Lenten days.  I’m sure the young fellow was not the only one who had deep thoughts about Jesus and the meaning of life.

Looking back over my years in education, I was blessed to be among thousands of young people making their way through the academic grades. I am proud of our Catholic education system that imparts scriptural knowledge and moral values in an atmosphere of peace and kindness.  Today, I pray for the amazing youth in our schools and for the fresh-faced young people in Russia and Ukraine who neither asked for a war nor ever dreamed they would be called to serve. I hope we are able, like that young student years ago, to measure ourselves against the cross - and have it steady us.

 -Sister Jean Moylan, csj

I Saw a Cross Upon a Hill : A Donkey's Tale

Are you enamoured by my cousins, Eeyore, that loveable donkey from the tales of Winnie the Pooh or is your style more a moviegoer’s favourite, tough guy, Donkey, Shrek’s talkative sidekick?  Do you sometimes find yourself humming that delightful Donkey Serenade, keeping company with a mule?  Such light hearted fun; but let’s put aside talk of my fictitious cousins.  Since truth is often stranger than fiction, let me tell you a little about myself, my humble self whom Chesterton once described in his humourous little poem as one:

With monstrous head and sickening cry,
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
Of all four-footed things.

But let me back track a little. About thirty three years ago, as legend has it, a humble little burro was chosen to carry pregnant Mary to Bethlehem to give birth to her Child. Did this not foreshadow the day I would be chosen to carry her Son into Jerusalem?  I will never forget that day! How could I forget our humble God enthroned upon my back?  I carried him that day, cautiously weaving through the cheering crowds, when all at once ‘There was a shout about my ears, and palms before my feet.’

His mission almost finished, I heard him warn his disciples that He would soon be put to death. Put to death, how could that be?  Surely, I had gotten it all wrong! 

I’m just a donkey, just the ‘devil’s walking-parody on all four footed things.’  Perhaps that’s all you think I am. However, when a distant rumble, ‘Crucify him’, pierced my ears, I stood and shuddered.   In the distance I saw a cross upon a hill and wished I could have carried it for him. 

No ludicrous buffoon am I.  No donkey ever was. You see, because I carried the King, donkeys, generations after me, bear a cross upon their backs.  May you, my friend, I beg you, think twice before you call someone an ass – for she or he, too, bears the divine.

Guest blogger Sr. Magdalena Vogt, Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood

                The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked,
And figs grew upon thorn,
Some moment when the moon was blood,
Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cry,
And ears like errant wings,
The devil’s walking parody
Of all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient, crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet.

         C. K. Chesterton