Serious Business 

   As we prepare to celebrate the resurrection and ascension of our Lord on Easter Sunday, I think it’s important to reflect on an often overlooked Lenten reminder; Christianity is serious business.

   Many have added the stations of the cross to their Lenten activities.  In this way we recall the brutal reality of the passion and death of our Lord.  We walk with Him as He carries His cross, falling several times, causing the Romans to force another to help carry the cross.  Along the way He meets His mother, our Blessed Mother, sharing a look surely full of sorrow and pain.  When Veronica offered her veil for Him to wipe His face she is blessed with the image of His face imprinted upon the veil.

   Upon His arrival at Calvary, Jesus is stripped, and nailed to the cross.  After three hours of agony, He relinquishes His spirit to the Father and dies.  Taken down from the cross, He is cradled in the arms of the Blessed Mother, carried to the tomb, and prepared for burial.

And yet, for all the pain and suffering He endured, by His resurrection and ascension He brought the hope and joy of Christianity.  In His death and rising He destroyed death and offered eternal life to those who would believe.

   In our life we must also recognize that Christianity is a serious business.  It is not a social club or a custom we continue out of habit, but a way of life.  We must recognize that we must accept the Lord and the truths He taught and implement them in our lives.  That means rejecting most of what society treasures and following the path through the narrow gate of faith.

   Christianity is not a cafeteria where we can select what we wish to believe and reject whatever isn’t pleasing to us.  If we cannot accept the fact of the real presence, we are eating and drinking condemnation upon ourselves by receiving communion.  If we are having sex of any kind outside of a sacramental marriage we are guilty of fornication, adultery, or both.  If we support the murder of babies in the womb, we are complicit in the murder of the innocents.  If we are unprepared to follow Christ all the way to Calvary if necessary, perhaps we need to rethink, and with the help of God, strengthen our faith.

 

Lord, we recall Your passion, death, and resurrection.  Increase our faith, help our unbelief.  Amen