Spiritual Life Committee 

Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity

Lenten Reflection: March 2004

THE NAKED AND ABANDONED CHRIST OF CALVARY

Rev. Stephen Quinn, S.T.

As men committed to the naked and abandoned Christ of Calvary, we are constantly called to re-found our lives on the basis of the Gospel.  Acts of the XIIth General Cenacle of the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity, Resolution 1, June 2003.

The Cross is a sign that provokes us to love, to worship, to gratitude, to thanksgiving, to service. The cross is our hope, our joy, our peace and consolation. Fr. Judge.

May I never boast about anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Gal 6:14

The day I arrived at Holy Trinity, Alabama as a young aspirant to membership in the Community, as I came up our road to the main Chapel I was struck by that Cross standing tall to the front and left of the Chapel, unadorned and naked.

I didn't know it then, but that Cross introduced me to an important aspect of the spirituality of our founder, Father Judge. I was to learn more in the novitiate and I am still learning the importance Father attached to the Cross.  The Cross, for him and for us who follow his grace, is essential to an understanding of our Missionary Cenacle way of life.

As one spiritual writer puts it, "Devotion to the cross," is not merely an optional "private devotion," or a "personal ascetical practice." Rather, it is at the heart of the Good News of the Gospel, for the Cross is the symbol of Jesus' saving love. It is the "sacrament" of God's love for the world and of the fullness of human response to that love.  So the Cross stands not at the periphery of Christian life, but at the very center. Thus,

The crucified Jesus, in His suffering love, stands at the center of our faith, raised up by the Father, fully alive. All truly Christian spirituality, therefore, focuses on the Crucified and Risen Jesus.

He is the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No one comes to the Father except through Him- a crucified Christ, rising from the rock which was pushed aside, is more alive than before.  The power of death is broken at last, the absolute that is God is encountered not as power that devastates and lays waste, but as love that saves and reconciles.  Jesus breaks the power of sin through His death and resurrection – Jesus' ultimate act of love.

His love forgives, heals and reconciles, brings together, frees us from our distorted egos and gives us a sense of true belonging.       

FATHER'S IMAGE OF JESUS

Father the symbol of that love – the crossed beams of the tree makes them the sacred symbol of our love for Jesus, our love for one another in Community, our apostolic love given out to those whom we serve. In our Resource Book we read:

Father Judge's primary interior, spiritual image of Jesus was that of a suffering Jesus. As the Cenacle members meditated on Jesus on the Cross, they were to identify their lives with the various mysteries of the body of the broken Savior.

How important it is for us to realize that Father again and again turns our attention

to the image of the thorn-crowned Christ – the image of the suffering Jesus.  He calls us to conformity to the suffering Jesus.  He says, Our King is the Man of Sorrows.  It is our glory to suffer with Him- the naked and desolate Christ of Gethsemani and Calvary.

Paul's words reflect the mind and heart of Father: Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself taking the form of a slave…he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death- even death on a cross. Phil 2: 1-11.

The Holy Father, John Paul II writes,

The dazzling of the Transfiguration prepares for the tragic, but no less glorious event of Calvary…The eyes of the Apostles are therefore fixed upon Jesus who is thinking of the Cross (cf. Lk 9: 43-45). There his virginal love for the Father and for all mankind will attain its highest expression.  His poverty will reach complete self-emptying, his obedience, the giving of his life.

The disciples are invited to contemplate Jesus raised up on the cross. It is in the contemplation of the Crucified Christ that all vocations find their inspiration.

Whenever Father contemplated Jesus, he inevitably saw Him suffering, especially in His mental sorrows. Father saw the Cenacle present with Jesus in the Garden – in a way that transcended temporal limitation.  Here are the words of Father,

How blessed is the person who can read in the crucifix the lessons of Our Lord's love. Let it speak to you! Speak to it! Seek council from it! Place your worries and frets in the Sacred Intellect of Jesus. What you love and what is dear to you in His Sacred Heart. Place what you are working hard for in His Sacred Hands, in the wounds thereof. Place what you have striven for, your many messages and apostolic visits for good, place these in the wounds of His Sacred feet.

Father further writes,

Make your consecration through love, yes, but especially the love of a soul that sorrows and is pained because of Him and His sorrows.  Let it be the reparation of love. Let Him who is so outraged today realize that you wish to make up and to love for yourself and for those who refuse Him love. Let Him even see this generous love find expression in good works and in the good will ever to make reparation.

Father's own life bears eloquent testimony to the emptying out, to apostolic outreach to others, to ministering Christ's love. Indeed it is said of him that he died of exhaustion.

OUR IDENTITY AS MEN COMMITTED TO THE NAKED AND ABANDONED CHRIST OF CALVARY

I suggest that the word "identity" in this context touches us at the very core of our being and challenges us to a full-hearted response to follow Christ as he was. Christ emptied himself for us.  His action was full and complete.  Our response in faith involves us in a radical following – freely and faithfully renewed – our vowed choice – namely a preferential love of the Lord Jesus, united and strengthened by our ties to one another in the Cenacle family, giving ourselves in an outreach of love to the forsaken, the abandoned and the marginalized.

To quote Father, "Among all peoples there are some favored creatures whom God has created with a special love, with a special thought.  These He foreordained to be made unto the image of His Son." It is not the image of the "triumphant God" or the commanding and ascending Christ but rather the image of the "thorn-crowned Christ." It is the image that we should strive for. The image involves us intimately in an "emptying out" a ready openness to conversion and transformation, perhaps as John Paul II invites us – to starting afresh with Christ, in contemplating the face of this Jesus – in kindling the fire that Christ came to cast on the earth – in the centrality of our prayer.

The words of our Rule of Life come to mind: " In a particular way we cherish in our prayer and labor the naked and abandoned Jesus on Calvary.  We express our love through personal service to his poor and abandoned members. " (#10). And again from Article 20: "Our prayer should not be narrow, personal prayer; it should reach the throne of God only after having touched the farthest bounds of God's creation and mourned in every human misery and rejoiced in God's goodness."

Again we have Father's words quoted in Article 39 of our Rule of Life: "The apostolic spirit is a rare spirit, a priceless spirit, a spirit high above that of those who are ordinarily devout. This is the spirit of those great, self-denying, sacrificing lovers of Jesus who leave everything and dispose of themselves to go anywhere."

Paul's words to the Philippians come to mind:

"I have come to rate all as loss in the light of the surpassing knowledge of my Lord Jesus Christ.  For His sake I have forfeited everything; I have accounted all else rubbish so that Christ may be my wealth and I may be in him, not having any justice of my own based on observance of the law. The justice I possess is that which comes from faith in Christ Jesus.

I wish to know Christ and the power flowing from His resurrection; likewise to know how to share in His sufferings by being formed into the pattern of His death. Thus do I hope that I may arrive at the resurrection from the dead.   Phil 3:8-14

As Apostles, we share "Christ's incarnational closeness and self-giving to others, seeking the good of those we serve, especially the poor without any taint of possessiveness or personal gain—ready for personal sacrifice through our own growth and regression, our own struggles and difficulties as well as "successes."

To dare ever more fully to love Christ for Himself and to seek to have the grace of sympathy, compassion and the capacity of suffering with Christ and with His poor and abandoned – what a challenge, what an opportunity for us Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity. How are we answering this challenge?

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Scripture References for Reflection:

Luke 9:23.          If anyone wants to be my follower, he must deny his very self, take up his cross each day, and follow me. Whoever would save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake saves it. What does it profit someone to gain the whole world and lose his very soul in the process?

Heb 12:2          Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, who inspires and perfects our faith. For the sake of the joy which lay before Him He endured the cross, heedless of its shame.

Gal 6:14          May I never boast about anything but the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Through it the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.

1 Cor 1:18          The message of the cross is complete absurdity for those who are heading for ruin, but for us who are experiencing salvation, it is the power of God.

Col 1:19,20          It pleased God to make absolute fullness reside in Him, and by means of Him, to reconcile everything in His person, both on earth and in the heavens, making peace through the blood of His cross.

For personal/communal reflection:

How do we perceive our devotion to the abandoned and naked Christ of Calvary feeding into and fostering our identity as Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity?

Reflect on this thought: it is only when one is willing to die with Christ that one finds strength to live as his follower and it is only by living with Christ that we learn to die.

Share from your experience practices and experiences that kept your attention on the naked and abandoned Christ of Calvary.