As we begin Holy Week, St. Simeon Skete/Nazareth House Apostolate shares with you this journal writing of Seraphim’s: “My Way of the Cross”.
I see you Jesus, I walk with you Jesus…
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| The Nails of the Cross. Placed in the Chapel at St. Simeon Skete during Lenten Season. |
“My Way of the Cross” (Written by Seraphim, 5 April 2005, Louisville, KY.)
Dropped in St. Martin de Tours Church to say my Rosary and found a group already praying so Im joining them. Its been a strange journey today. The bus driver was out of sorts and her spirit was throughout the bus. Her job, her cross, and it hurts. Just now a man with Downs Syndrome in his 60’s left his pew after the Rosary finished. He was carrying a bundle of well used devotional booklets and a prayer book bound together with rubber bands. I could tell, sense, that a life time of devotion had just passed, a Simon of Cyrene, bearing His cross by bearing his. Could this be another station in which the Lord is developing, “my personal way of the cross?” Perhaps in all likelihood these stations are going on all the time and it is still Jesus, we’re passing and it is He that is passing us by in His way, His “personal Way of the Cross”.
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| The Crown of Thorns, The Scourging. Placed in the Chapel at St. Simeon Skete during Lent. |
I boarded the bus again and at the next stop a woman and her daughter got on. She had been beaten by life; her ratted, worn polyester stretch-pants over a body long worn and pushed out of shape, her teeth missing on a face that looked as if it had been beaten in from time to time. And her daughter? She was a teen, concerned about her looks as most naturally are. She had on trendy “gym shoes” and dressed nicely, a covering not only for her body, but also for what she didn’t want others to know. When they boarded the bus the mother paid the fare for both of them. The daughter went to the back of the bus while the mother sat at the front. I could almost hear the thought of the daughter, “I hope no one thinks I’m with her”. I watched the mother for response – none – she sat with dignity, not energizing the stares and ignorance of her daughter. When the stop came for them to de-board the bus, the mother inconspicuously looked to the back to catch her daughter’s eye and gave a nod, she de-boarded from the back and the mother from the front of the bus. I thought as the stops came and went, this mother who, as it were, had holes in her hands, feet and side, her face as if someone had struck her repeatedly and she was stooped as she walked, as if someone had beaten her back. Her loved one fleeing lest someone might associate her with this embarrassment. The mother showed no sign of hurt over this, no resignation, as if at one time there was hope, expectation that she would be accepted, loved and not an embarrassment to others. Things were just as they were, nothing was to change, or for that matter, was able to change. Again, could this be another station, another “bus stop” of the cross? …my own stations of the cross that God, the Holy Spirit was bringing to me? As I thought on these things I heard three beeps of a car horn that strangely sounded like a cock crowing.
As you walk through your own life be aware that Christ continues to carry his cross in others.
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| The remaining ashes of Ash Wednesday are enthroned in the Chapel of St. Simeon Skete during the Lenten Season. |
…and he went a little further…
