Lent Reflection

Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross: 13

I can remember, as a child, sitting next to my father in Church, and watching tears stream down his face while he looked up at the Crucifixion. My father also cried the first time he saw David’s Michelangelo in Italy, the first time I left home, the first time I rode a bike on my own. He was a crier, a man of expressive emotion, a person that inspired me to realize and feel connected to the humanity in all those I would encounter. This is perhaps the reason, that despite Jesus’ miraculous and divine nature, I am most drawn to his suffering, his time as part of mankind.

As Jesus died on the cross, he was bloody, breathless, weak and broken. The calm and loving hands of his mother and friends removed his body from the splintered bark of the tree he had hung from.

He was dead, heat slowly escaping him, as their tears must have mixed with his blood, their grief consumed them on the dusty ground, soldiers and crowds members walking away to continue on with their own lives. He was dead, yet
with his passing, it was realized that he had been loved on earth. Even if he were not God, even if he did not rise from the dead the next morning, this was a real and
true accomplishment in itself, perhaps the greatest accomplishment any of us will ever achieve. To be loved.

This year was full of challenges for me, and I think I can say, that a part of me died. Perhaps it was my nativity, my emotional immaturity, my attachment to the past, my unwillingness to accept the future. I struggled to be at peace, to be at my best, to be present, to be on time, to clean my room. Yet, during this struggle, this death of something inside me, I had new friends, new supports, new blessings holding me up, taking me down from my cross, preparing my body for re-birth.

My roommate Ed let me cry to him, and feel vulnerable, with a grace I had never encountered before. My roommate Eileen didn’t let me stay in the dark places for too long, pushing me with her spirit and optimism. All of my roommates, and the entire Amate community, were supportive of me, and although they may not ever know how low I actually got, it was all their hands that held me up.

My students and school community were also a remarkable blessing to me, although there were days that I was too weak to serve them effectively at all. Around Christmas time, several members of my small track team hugged me in my classroom, and told me they nothing more than for me to be happy again. My third and fifth graders promised to pray for me whenever they could. Sandra and Bryana, two conflicting eighth grade girls, sought my counsel, and told me how lucky they were to have a teacher that understood them. Erica, the school therapist, talked me through my toughest days, and always encouraged my strong points. A second grader, Ashley, gave me a book on Hope and finding God. My kindergartens wrote me a song on how I was their favorite teacher. Jacob, a seventh grader, who had been a real disciplinary challenge for me at the beginning of the year, came alive when I introduced him to poetry, and would slip me a new poem at least once a week with a proud smile on his face. Arturo, a challenged learner, in eighth grader, appreciated and thanked me for encouraging his breathtaking talent in art and music. Ms. Julia, the kindergarten aide, always spoke softely to me when she knew I was having a tough day. Ms. Heidi invited me to after school field trips and brought out my passion for the students at St. Ann School. David, Emilio, Nico, my fourth grade drama students, instilled in me again the power of a child’s imagination in creating art, and the innocence of learning new things each day. Kevin, a student with cancer, brought awe to my day with his undying enthusiasm and high spirits. My boss, and co-workers, presented undying patience and understanding as I struggled through my depression and uncertainty. My supports were boundless, and life giving, and although I wasn’t always able to receive these blessings with presence, my gratefulness was sincere and apparent. I may have stayed on the cross forever, if it were not for these people, who as my father had showed me years ago, had real humanity in them, just as Jesus had real humanity in him. Miracles are born, I believe, when human beings are at their best, serving one another, loving one another, fully alive.

I want to take this time to apologize to all of you for all the times I failed to be at my best, and thank you for all the times you removed the nails from my limbs, allowing me to die peacefully, so I could be re-born.