“It’s not the load that breaks you down. It’s the way you carry it.” C.S. Lewis (or) Lena Horn, (or) Lou Holtz

This quote from C.S. Lewis struck me very forcefully this week. If you remember the Second reading last Sunday from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (4:30-5:2) he called us to follow Jesus as live as a “fragrant aroma” in the world. As sons and daughters of God it is often how we carry life that allows us to be evangelizers of the good news of Jesus Christ. The fragrant aroma of life invites us and others to move closer and gather as one as we are drawn by the sweetness of love. It is like the baking of fresh bread that moves us one by one into the kitchen of life. And when we think about it, if the aroma is not that of sweetness and joy then the opposite also occurs and we find ourselves the stench of hatred and bitterness scattered and avoiding the unity of Jesus and his Church.

If we carry our load with anger and resentment then we can quickly discover that the sin of unforgiveness, greed, hatred and prejudice will overcome us. The anger and resentment will color the sweetness of life and we can be isolated from the peace of living in union with love. The destructiveness of anger, especially anger that is held and never released, does harm to our call to serve as we become grudging participants always looking for the harm that is being done to us by others and missing the beauty of God’s love and grace that we participate in but never accept. Shoving away rather than embracing in hope.

If we carry the loads of life with the face of a sacrificial martyr, look at me as I suffer for you, pitying our lot in life as the unwilling bearer of life’s burdens we have lost our focus on the importance of serving and caring in our vocation of love. We enter into a joyless and loveless act of service where our load becomes ever increasingly and annoyance that wears down our ability to reach out to others. Our focus becomes ever more increasingly on the perceived injustice of our having to shoulder everything for everyone else and that no one notices our cares about my sacrifices and how much I suffer for them. Poor little me!

If we carry our load with Jesus we carry it with hope and love, “take up his (your) cross and follow me.”(Mk 8:34) It is were we allow the anger and self-pity of sin to be seen in the light of God’s love in giving us His Son, Our Lord Jesus.   It is where we recognize the load for what it is, a burden to be carried, and not for what it isn’t, a punishment to be suffered. It is when we choose to accept that our sins and the sins of the others will at times cause us heartache and hurt but cannot destroy our call to be beloved sons and daughters of God. The hope and love with which we live our Christian call is one of living within the joy and peace or a relationship with God. It is where we bear witness to the grace of reconciliation, forgiveness and mercy that unites us with one another and ultimately allow the great Other to walk with us as the others that we live in community with. It is living daily the antidote for despair, which is an inoculation of prayer, our daily conversation with God.

God Bless

Fr. Mark