Christ’s story of His crucifixion and resurrection is well known. As a child, we hear the story and are taught to focus on the hope of His and our resurrection. Whether you believe in this or not, it’s our focus on the parts of the story that I want to revisit.
When hearing this in my youth, I thought that His story was unique to Him. That He carried His cross, that He was crucified, and that He was resurrected. We are told He took human form for us. I took this to mean that He was born a baby and grew to live as a man before His death. Just like you and I.
As I have grown older, you begin to notice people with failing health, others who experience a sudden death, and those that enter home hospice to be with their families. Our time is approaching as well. When we are younger, these thoughts and experiences are far from our mind.
What has made a deep impression on me is the fact that Christ’s journey towards His death was not unique to Him. He simply was using a parable to teach us a very important yet difficult part of life that all of us will face.
Carrying His heavy cross must have been very difficult. It took time for Him to reach the place where He would be nailed to it. Dying on a cross (while never witnessing it) must have took time and been painful.
He simply replicated the struggles in our life that poor health, impending death, hospice, and other family issues create individually for us through His passion. He used a cross, His experience with it and His mother to teach us even more.
While we pray that we too will be resurrected, it is His parable of the Cross that should help us understand the journey we all must travel on our way towards death. We should find comfort in this journey, in that, none of us can escape it.
Embracing it, as Jesus did, with dignity, humility and respect is a message that was hid from me as a child. Remaining present and close, as His mother was during his struggle, gives us the example of strength that we need to aspire to while always being there for others during their journey.
We are never far from life and its essence. If only we choose to see.