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  Love Letters - Readers

Before the Cross

Fr. Bob McDonald, SM

The Cross has played an early part in my life. One night, when I was six years old, my brother, James, nine, was telling me the story of Our Lady of Guadeloupe. I thought he had gone to sleep. But he had died.

My Father had the blacksmith forge an iron Cross. He painted it white. And he placed it over the grave. We often went there to pray, to bring flowers, to cut the grass.

The Cemetery became a holy place for us, a place close to Heaven.

I remember my parents helping the parish erect a large Cross at the center of the cemetery, with the figure of Jesus hanging on the Cross. To raise money, they put on a play: “Red Acre Farm”, a melodrama. On Sunday afternoons during the winter months, actors would come to our house to practice their lines. Then they staged the play in the local “Scenic Theatre” where silent pictures were still being shown. My sister Anne cried when the villain foreclosed and the family was being evicted from the farm. After showings in surrounding towns, enough money had come in to purchase this large Crucifix.

We often gathered around the Cross to pray. Once, after I was ordained, I celebrated Mass on the base of the Cross, with family around me.

Our Lord’s love for us is expressed so clearly as he hangs between earth and heaven. By accepting the Cross, Jesus completed the Covenant he made when he went down into the Jordan and was baptized. His love is total, complete, forever!

Our Baptism is a call to enter into this mystery of Love. Our Baptism is the beginning of our Covenant relationship with our God. We are baptized to enter into that mystery of suffering and death and Resurrection. We renew that Covenant each time we approach the Altar and take into ourselves the Body and Blood of Our Lord.

Some of us have entered into a further Covenant. As your Priest I have made a solemn promise to love you as my Bride, as a Sacrament signifying how Jesus loves us all. Standing before the Cross, I see what that calls me to do.

Every baptized couple, standing before the Altar on their Wedding Day, makes a lifelong Covenant to love each other for a life time. In doing that, they begin the journey of becoming a Sacrament of Love, signifying, like the Priest, God’s love for his Bride.

John and Nat Young were one of those special couples whose love spoke that message clearly. They were the couple who first helped me write my talks for the Marriage Encounter Weekend. They told me that they had a Crucifix by their bed. Every night, they knelt before that cross and renewed their love, asking each other forgiveness, and granting it. Then they blessed each other with that sign of Love. John and Nat are gone now. He followed his beloved within a year.

As Good Friday approaches, I invite you to dialogue on the question: “What are my feelings as I look upon the Cross, and think of my Covenant to Love you.”

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