It was a bitterly cold February day in 1941 when Karol Wojtyła returned from his labors at the Zakrzówek quarry. He walked back, as usual, with a coworker and friend Juliusz Kydryński, whose mother gave Karol some dinner to take back for him and his father. When Karol entered his father’s room at the end of their dark hallway, he found his bedridden father slumped over, and when he tried to lift him up, discovered that during that day he had died. They had nicknamed their drafty and dark apartment “the catacomb.” That evening it was heart-wrenchingly apropos. “I was not at my mother’s death, I was not at my brother’s death, I was not at my father’s death. At twenty, I had already lost all the people I loved.” The distraught son ran for a priest from St. Satanisław’s to give his father the Last Rites (they can be given when there is doubt about whether the person is dead) and all that night he stayed kneeling by his father’s side. Juliusz came to be with him, though Karol ever after said that he had never felt so alone.
My friends, this week we have stayed with Christ as he approached His death for our sake, spending time at Jesus’ cross and tomb, watching Him win for us the grace to make us saints. It is a tremendous gift to be with Him! We will all face our share of catacombs, crosses, or calvaries too. Perhaps right now for you that is an interior place of suffering or temptation, or a loss in your family or brokenness in a relationship, or maybe it is the burdens and fears that are just part of being human. Holy Week reminds us that in every suffering we are with Our Lord.
But there is more in the cross than that!
The Kydryńska’s invited Karol to come live with them for a time, intense prayer continuing to pour from his heart. “He went to Mass every day, he prayed a lot in his room, and he lay prostrate” they remembered of him, practices would mark the rest of his life. We do not get to see the grace at work within him but about a year later Karol chose to enter the underground seminary (the Nazi’s still occupying Poland, and most of Europe). It was not the obvious choice for a man with many young friends, fervently engaged in theatre and acting, and wanting to finish a degree in philology, BUT it makes sense if he took that year to pray like his recently-passed father. In Crossing the Threshold of Hope, JPII recalls from his childhood: “… after my mother’s death, [my father’s] life became one of constant prayer. Sometimes I would wake up during the night and find my father on his knees, just as I would always see him kneeling in the parish church. We never spoke about a vocation to the priesthood, but his example was in a way my first seminary, a kind of domestic seminary.”
Crosses, losses, sufferings, these do not just make us more like Jesus, they incorporate us into His saving the world! St. Paul says to the Colossians, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Paul is not saying that carrying his cross adds something to Jesus’ or completes something Jesus neglected to do on calvary. Rather, the phrase means that Paul carrying his cross – because he has been bonded with Christ by baptism – is in fact carrying Christ’s cross, or better yet, Christ is carrying His cross through Paul. My friends, when you pick up your cross –
whatever it is – Jesus’ perfect act of obedience, and love, and trust – the act that saved the world – happens through your heart, your hands, your will, your body. Do not underestimate your cross!
In 1946 (the Communists now in charge) Karol was ordained a priest on All Saints day and celebrated three ‘first’ Masses the following day (as priests are allowed to do on All Souls Day). He wore black vestments, and offered one Mass for his deceased mother, one for his decesaed brother, and one for his deceased father. One might think it was a somber day. It was not.
It is a hard truth that there is no way to Easter except by Calvary, no way to the Father except through Christ. But the thing is that resurrection is not a gift if redemption has not happened yet. Going and eating from the tree of life is a terrible eternity if the hurt and separation from the tree of knolwedge has not yet been remedied! To be alive forever, but stuck in sin, would be hell – it is hell. BUT, when we carry our cross through, with, and in Jesus, then the gift of eternal life bursts into our lives now. When Fr. Wojtyła raised the consecrated host – and whenever we receive the Eucharist while carrying our own crosses – not only are we brought back to Holy Week, and not only are our crosses transfigured into His, but the resurrection is also renewed in us. Angels decend, Christ steps into our midst, forgiveness and joy are poured forth, and we are sent out with news of the greatest come back in history.
And we aren’t bystanders! That Good News is part of our crosses too.