Trust makes the cross bearable

Good News Reflection
Friday of the Fourth Week of Lent
March 19, 2010

Today's Feast: Saint Joseph
Pray for husbands and fathers:
http://wordbytes.org/saints/DailyPrayers/Joseph.htm

Today's Readings:
2 Sam 7:4-5,12-14,16
Ps 89:2-5,27,29
Rom 4:13,16-18,22
Matt 1:16,18-21,24 or Luke 2:41-51
http://www.usccb.org/nab/031910.shtml
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/10_03_19.mp3

Trust makes the cross bearable

The Gospel reading for this feast day seems out of place in Lent. However, its lesson in trust is very apropos for facing the cross. In it, we see Joseph growing in his ability to trust God. How difficult it must have been to believe Mary's story! He didn't trust her when she tried to explain how she became pregnant. So, God sent him an angel in a dream.

Now, Joseph had to trust that his dream was not a product of his own imagination. Wouldn't it have been more convincing if the angel had appeared to him in person, the way Mary had been visited by an angel?

And yet, something about the dream triggered Joseph's faith. He believed what he heard in his sleep. I suspect, though, that a new doubt flooded him as soon as he believed the message of the dream. He might have wondered: "Who am I to raise the Messiah! I can't do this! I'm not worthy of this responsibility and I will make mistakes!"

Maybe the questions lingered only a second, or maybe he had to get down on his knees and go deep into prayer before he could feel God's assurance. Either way, he chose to trust God, which gave him the freedom to feel assured that God would help him take care of Mary and the child.

In today's first reading, David chose to trust that God would protect his throne forever. In the second reading, Paul reminds us that Abraham "hoped against hope" (which is the meaning of trust) that although he and his wife were well past their child-bearing years, he would become the father of a great nation as promised.

And Jesus had to trust that his death upon the cross – and all of its excruciating pain and the tortures before it – would lead to the glory of resurrection and the redemption of the world. During his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, when he begged the Father to protect him from the cross, he too, like Mary and Joseph, was visited by an angel who comforted him.

What sufferings are you enduring that could benefit from a visit by an angel? You have an angel who wants to comfort you and strengthen your trust.

To travel through the cross to resurrection, to move from pain to glory, trust is necessary. Without trusting that God will produce victory from even the worst, most discouraging situations, the pain becomes unbearable, because it all seems so pointless and destructive.

Trust God. Your resurrection glory has already been planned!

© 2010 by Terry A. Modica
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