Eventually everything goes to hell.
Despite our best efforts, our careful planning, hard work, our prayers and loving attentiveness,
taking our vitamins-eventually things fall apart, sometimes slowly, sometimes spectacularly.
Our world ends.
Our dreams and hopes collapse.
We betray those we love best, we are forsaken by those we thought loved us. Life as we know it
is taken from us. We do harm.
Life is fatal in more ways than one, a tragic comedy.
The Cross. It is always there. It is a symbol of devastation and travesty.
It is not nice. It is not for polite conversation or company.
What do we do when our dreams and hopes are mocked and murdered? What do we do when
our hearts are broken? When we break our own hearts? When we break someone else?
The Cross.
This is the week where we look into that darkness.
We look into that darkness-and we find light.
This is the mystery that is the Gospel. God goes into that darkness. God goes to hell. God is
torn apart. And everything changes.
The horror becomes a joy, an ecstasy, a beauty that shocks, it becomes something that is beyond
our capacity to take in or express. We talk about resurrection too lightly, like we know what it
means.
There is power in the blood of the cross, wonder working power.
A goodness that breaks our hearts, a joy that is unbearable, a beauty that terrifies, a light that
blinds.
It changes things.
It is the power to love anyway, not only despite the darkness, but because of it.
This week we attend to the cross, to the darkness, and we see how love wins, how love
transforms, how love is stronger than death.
Eventually everything goes to hell, even God.
Love anyway. Love anyway.