And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be My disciple. Luke 14:27
“The old joke says that the Englishman takes pride in being a self-made man, thereby relieving God of a fearful responsibility. The urge to be creators of ourselves, though, is not restricted to any one nation or class. Whenever we set our feet on the road to the impossible…We fear the other kind of burden because carrying it means that certain things are decisively out of our control and we can only respond in trust or faith…
Jesus says in Matthew 11:30 that His yoke is easy – but we can hardly forget that He also tells us to pick up and carry the cross. To see – to feel – the cross as a light load is the impossible possibility of faith: letting our best loved pictures of ourselves and our achievements die, trying to live without the protection we are used to…It is only very slowly indeed that we come to see why the bearing of the cross is a deliverance, not a sentence; why the desert fathers and mothers could combine relentless penance with confidence and compassion.”
Rowan Williams in Silence and Honey Cakes: The Wisdom of the Desert (Oxford: Lion Books, 2004) 48-49.
Until we let go of what we think we want our generosity and compassion to look like, we won’t grasp what it could be in Christ. The cross of Christ is a light load but it requires trust and abandonment.
The picture of the Englishman makes us smile, and maybe that is because only the Archbishop (Williams) can get away with saying it. We may think we are growing in generosity and compassion but are we?
I’m realizing today that the path of growth in these areas may rather be this narrow little trail that few take that is marked by daily dying to self and carrying a cross that, ironically, is a light load.
This leads us to the practice of penance. Many are averse to but might benefit from it. Think of it as retraining yourself in how to live. And what should that look like. It should appear with a sense of “confidence and compassion.”
Confidence is rooted in the fact that denying ourselves and carrying our cross daily is the impossible possibility of faith. When we do, we realize it is a light load that releases us to live, give, serve, and love compassionately like Jesus.
The alternative is to try to sort things on our own as self-made people. Let’s not go that route!