“Marvel at God's magnanimity: he has become Man to redeem us, so that you and I – who are absolutely worthless, admit it! – may come to know Him and trust Him.” (Saint Josemaria “The Forge”, 30).
It seems that I have been deceived. Though the deception relates to God, it was not God who deceived me, but rather my own pride that has caused me to become deceived.
All my life I have prayed to God and thought in my heart – poor God. And I know where this started and I understand the reason for this very clearly. You see, when I was a little girl in Kindergarten, I watched a school play, put on by the Year Six students at my primary school. In that play, a year six boy, with an impressive blonde mullet, took the part of Christ crucified. And he carried a wooden cross around the netball court as we children sat quietly with our legs crossed and watched the play.
This was the very first time that I had seen the crucifixion of Christ, or really heard the story of Christ’s Passion and Death on the Cross. We had always spoken about God and prayed to Him. My mother had taught us to pray from an early age, but I had never seen the scene or understood how it might have looked to the crowd.
I very clearly remember – as though it were yesterday – the feeling of horror and pity that descended upon my little four-year-old heart watching that play unfold. I remember turning to the older child who sat next to me (another Year Six student assigned with the task of keeping the little Kindergarteners quiet) and asking, “Did that really happen?” I remember watching the children beat the child-Christ with a whip and listen as they pretended to shout at him and the way he pretended to flinch. I watched as he stumbled with the Cross upon his back. I listened as the children playing Herod and Pilate and washing their hands of him and tormenting him. And my heart contracted with horror as only a child’s heart can.
The next year I attended a different school and never again in my life did I see the Passion of Christ enacted as a child…
And I think about that scene today because that afternoon, when my mother collected me from school, I cried and cried and cried and cried. And when she asked me why, I did not have the words in my little four year old mind to explain the horror that I felt at the crucifixion of Christ.
Saint Josemaria wrote in “The Forge’ at 30, who said, “Marvel at God's magnanimity: he has become Man to redeem us, so that you and I – who are absolutely worthless, admit it! – may come to know Him and trust Him.”
And today I trust Him – remembering the horror in my little four year old heart on the day that I learned of the nature of His Passion and Death and I give thanks that I was allowed to experience in that the and that place the Death of my Beloved, for I truly believe that the Grace of such a vision has endured for the course of my entire life…
For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.
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