By MARIA SERMERSHEIM
MEDITATIONE IGNIS
This year, I was part of Notre Dame’s Campus Ministry RCIA team, so the Triduum celebrations were especially beautiful – particularly the Vigil, which included the Sacraments of Initiation for the people whom we guided in the faith all year. Many people shed many tears of joy during that beautiful Triduum – and I’ll admit, my eyes leaked a bit, too.
But the moment of the most tears I shed surprised me. They were tears of a different nature.
They were tears more like St. Monica’s, tears pleading for the conversion of friends and family of my own, that they might know Christ’s love and be saved. I cried for those I love who suffer, and who seem not to know the depths of suffering that Christ endured for love of them. He suffers with them, and they don’t even know it.
They were tears more like St. Peter’s, who met Jesus’ loving gaze after denying him three times and who then had to run from the courtyard in his bitter sorrow – in his knowledge that, as much as he was loved by Jesus and loved him in return, he did not show such dedication under pressure (Lk 22:61). Peter’s flesh was weak, as is mine in daily devotion.
Most people who wept at the Triduum wept at the Vigil, but I cried the afternoon before, on Good Friday, when I reflected on Jesus’ intense Passion and wondered, “Why would you suffer that and then not save us all?” I was struck with a longing for others I love to know Christ’s piercing and persistent love, and also by the scandal of particularity: he would endure all of it for me alone – even for just me. I had whiplash between straining for others to know the love of God and being overwhelmed by the depths of his love for me. And as I wondered how I could show my dear ones the depths of God’s love, I stood to receive Communion, and I remembered the words of St. Augustine in his ancient homily: “Behold what you are, become what you receive.” That is, the Body of Christ.
It was then that the tears struck in earnest; and it is this prayer from Good Friday that has highlighted sections of Eucharistic Prayer I for me in these following days. I pray particularly fervently now with the priest when he says, “Remember, Lord, your servants…and all gathered here, whose faith and devotion are known to you. For them, we offer you this sacrifice of praise or they offer it for themselves and all who are dear to them: for the redemption of their souls, in hope of health and well-being, and paying their homage to you, the eternal God, living and true.”
God knows that my devotion, like St. Peter’s, has wavered more than I like. God also knows that I offer the sacrifice with my whole heart for those who are dear to me, for the redemption of their souls and for their health and well-being. I pray that God “order our days in [his] peace, and command that we be delivered from eternal damnation and counted among the flock of those [he has] chosen.” He opened my eyes to these powerful prayers with tears. In what ways might the Lord be inviting you to a new prayer this Easter season?