The Feast of the Cross ~ Midway through Great Lent 2014

 Mr. Husband went to our far-away church for the weekend.

It was lovely and very good to be there.

The Cross is brought out with great solemnity and beauty

in the middle of Great Lent

to encourage and strengthen us in our Lenten endeavours. 

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Lent can be quite difficult for many of us.

I know that for me this past week was one that found me at times

fainthearted and struggling.

I think this can be true for many of us.

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Yet the Church is here to help us;

to carry us to Pascha, like the four carried the paralytic

to Christ, even going so far as to remove a roof 

to lower the paralytic in front of Christ.

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May Christ have mercy on us.

The homily that I heard yesterday morning

included that we in the world must 

find our own path to self-denial, 

to pick up our Cross and follow Christ...

it could be illness, it could be unemployment,

or many other struggles in life,

but that it is better to accept the struggles one is given

and bear them than to ask Christ to take them away,

that sometimes God may answer our prayer for the cross in our life

to be taken away, but that a different cross will

invariably come, and that it may be

even harder than the one that you were relieved of.

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It gave me pause to think...

we are often so quick to run away from our struggles

instead of finding peace in the midst of them,

seeking to bear the Cross that will be or become our

path to Christ, our true way forward...

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Indeed, it is the place of the Cross and then the 

very tomb of Christ where Holy Pascha begins.

Where Christ is Resurrected.

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May we be given the mercy to come to Christ's Holy Pascha.