March 23rd, 2024
I find it remarkably fascinating how one day can live on in our memories for years, as though we had just lived that day yesterday. I can name a few days like this from my life, one being the day I met my fiancé, another the day he proposed. I also vividly remember December 29, 2021, and the night I said goodbye to a priest and dear friend of mine before I moved to Glasgow.
Another night that stands out in my memory is this one Friday in Lent of last year. I attended Stations of the Cross at the National Shrine of Saint Maximilian Kolbe in Mundelein, Illinois. Lent was nearing its end, and I had started to experience the usual dips of my Lenten practice. I knew additional prayer would keep me centered and on course, so I made a point to attend the Stations of the Cross that evening.
The Shrine was full of people. I arrived early and still had no place to sit. I was kneeling on the marble floor, praying for the grace to offer the moment as an act of humility and penance. Then came the first station in which Jesus falls (the third Station). As I bowed forward, I suddenly couldn’t lift the weight of my own body. My only hope of not keeling to the floor was to put my hands down in front of me. My back felt heavy, as if a weight had been placed on it, and I couldn’t lift my head.
I pondered if I were imagining the sensation, especially since we were reflecting on the Station in which Jesus falls because He couldn’t bear the weight of the Cross on His own. In my prayer, however, I came to understand that this weight I was experiencing, whether from my own imagination which God worked through or as a gift from God Himself, was the weight of my sin.
It brought me to tears.
In some sense, despite it being rather crippling, I could bear the weight on my back. It was a hopeful reminder that the Lord sees our sinfulness as something to wash away. There is nothing we can do that the Lord cannot bear. He is merciful. If we ask, He will clear our slates with no strings attached. He is simple in this way. In another sense, however, I was upset that I carried such a heavy weight at all. “What have I done?” I thought.
Then, it occurred to me that I am one of several trillion children of God who have lived and are yet to come, whose own sinful weights Jesus carried via the Cross to Calvary. I, who am too often too far from the daughter God calls me to be, may have been able to hold myself up on my hands and knees, but how could Jesus hold up the weight of not only my own, but trillions of other people’s sin?
The thought took my breath away.
It hit me like a blow to the stomach.
“No wonder you fell,” I prayed, as I knew instantaneously that my sins contributed to the Lord’s falling on His journey to be crucified, so that He could wash away the weight from my own
back. The final and perhaps most important realization was then, “Where have I been?” As I said, the Lord sees our sinfulness and wants to wash it away. We simply must ask. Why haven’t I asked enough? Why haven’t I always asked with sincerity?
This changed my outlook on Lent entirely. Lent is not simply a time for silence, for freeing ourselves from indulgence and dying to ourselves. It is also a time set aside by the Church to remind us of the weight the Lord bore on our behalves — each and every one of us, individually and personally. It reminds us that, in light of all the darkness we may wrought, to be free, we must run to the Lord. And how amazing! When we reach Him, all we have to do is ask.
"Michaela Elise "Kiki" Fox is pursuing a Master of Arts in Musical Theatre Performance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow, Scotland. She has extensive experience in religious ministry, including co-founding a young artists' community in the Archdiocese of New York, called the Catholic Young Artists of the Hudson Valley.