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On my nephew’s birthday long ago, when I was sleeping over at my sister’s house, I was awakened by my wide-eyed nephew tearing through the house.
Opening every door wide open, he shouted to the world, simply giddy with delight and filled with overwhelming wonder:
“I’m FIVE! I’m FIVE! I’m FIVE!”
His eyes shone bright, his face was flushed, true joy filled his little energetic body from fingertips to toes. He was electrified with sheer amazement at the gift of being five.
Truly, I’ve never witnessed a happier birthday. The memory of it still makes me smile.
Childlike awe
Many years have passed since that time of childhood simplicity and wonderment. Birthdays come and go, years slip by, and wonder at the world fades as our childhood simplicity wanes. This inevitably happens to each of us as we grow into adults and may begin to take things for granted.
This can happen in our faith lives, too. Day after day, year after year at the end of Lent as we listen to the Passion of Our Lord during the Easter Triduum, do we just go through the motions and mechanically accept, without wonder, the most precious miracle God gifted us?
It is not just the same old story repeated year in and year out. It is the living story actively taking place in every one of our lives each day — if we open our hearts to the grace to see it.
With hearts and eyes wide open in wonder as we approach the Triduum, let us enter with the simplicity of children into Our Lord’s suffering, death, and Resurrection. With the deepest sacrifice we can muster in our little human hearts, let us approach with so much awe the gift of Our Father’s love.
Way of the Cross
The way of the cross is the only way by which we’ll get to Heaven. It was the way of Christ and the only way for us, his followers.
And when we realize just what exactly the sacrifice of the cross looks like in our own individual lives — and offer it back to Our Father with childlike simplicity — only then will we begin to understand what it actually takes to stay on the road to Heaven.
Am I able to nail myself to that cross, as a sacrifice to Our Father? That’s what our very lives should be — a sacrifice. And there are times in our lives during which this becomes apparent: Do I choose God’s will or my own? Can I dig deep enough within myself to pull out the sheer will to choose correctly?
Maybe it’s in a life-changing decision, such as discerning a vocation, or maybe it’s in a million tiny decisions each day, like swallowing sadness or pride for the sake of another.
Whether the decision is big or small, you know you have offered the best of yourself when it hurts. Because sacrifice hurts. That’s the point of it, the definition of it. If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not a sacrifice.
Sometimes God asks of us more than we think we can bear. Lean into him then, use him as your strength, your crutch, your shield. He will not fail you. Not if you lean on him alone and fully.
“The Lord lives! Blessed be my rock, and exalted be my God, the rock of my salvation,” (2 Samuel 22:47).
True sacrifice
When you do battle within yourself between God’s will and your own — and you choose to obey God’s will, or to remain still until you can clearly discern his will — that is when you have tasted true sacrifice.
This dying to oneself, this triumph of will over emotion — that’s the kind of sacrifice you can ask God to nail to the cross along with His only Son. And even then your sacrifice is a pittance compared to God’s own sacrifice, but at least you can begin to understand His unfathomable love for you.
When we have given him in love these sacrifices we’ve clutched so tightly to ourselves that we must pry them out of our hearts with sheer will and God’s grace, then we begin to glimpse what it means to sweat blood with him in the Garden of Gethsemane, feel the helmet of thorns piercing his dear head, carry the heavy cross with him to Mount Calvary, withstand the excruciating pounding of nails into his hands and feet.
When we have accompanied our Lord through his sacrifice, while truly offering up our own at the same time, then we find that something inside us has got to break — for love of God. For He was broken completely for love of each of us. And for us to love Him as much as is humanly possible, we must be broken for love of Him.
Rising anew
After we have passed, simple and broken, through the pain and suffering of the Passion — and truly taken on all it entails, for love of God — then with what childlike awe we can rise anew with Our Lord on Easter!
What a gift! What immeasurable love!
There is no happier moment than this realization. Embrace it, then, as a child:
“He’s ALIVE! He’s ALIVE! He’s ALIVE!”
He is indeed alive, so that we, his children, might live.
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four children, is a member of St. John the Baptist Parish, Waunakee.