The Path

  Today, I had the honor of helping to prepare kids for the sacrament of confirmation.  During the course of the day, a common theme that always came up was the path to Christ.  A friend of mine who was leading the retreat kept saying that Christ is "in front of us, behind us, and beside us."  I really like how that plays out, but it brought back to mind something that hit me like a truck last night at adoration.  An interesting thought that came to me.  Now, before I say anything, I am neither a theologian, or very smart, I just think this is an interesting reflection point.  The thought I had is that, maybe, just maybe our path to God is not our path.  Maybe Christ is not in "front of, behind, or beside us." Maybe we are in "front of, behind or beside" Him.  

  This seems confusing, so let me simplify what I mean.  I am going to give a series of fourteen sentences that should be pretty familiar to you.  We are humiliated and judged.  We take upon our burden and start the journey.  We fail.  We are picked up by family.  Our struggles are attempted to be relieved by people around us.  Once it has become clear our struggles are not able to be helped, people help ease our anguish. Despite your best efforts, and the efforts of those you love and who love you, you fail yet again.  Through all your pain and agony with your struggle, you are still able to offer help and console others who may be sharing similar or different struggles.  Despite everything you have done to beat the struggle, you become fed up with it, and fail again.  You begin to realize what it will take to ease your pain as the old you begins to be shred.  The culmination of your entire journey to this point comes to a climax as you fully understand what must happen in order to not only relieve yourself of the pain, but also become a better person than you ever could have dreamed of.  You finally succeed in killing your pain or struggle.  You are shown defeated.  Your struggle finally ends with you burying your old self, and embracing the new, resurrected self that you discovered through your journey.

  If that rang a bell in your head, that was a real life following of the Stations of the Cross.  Did Christ not give us the path to take to God when he chose to take that path himself?  Whenever we are to grow in our faith, we choose to take up our Cross and walk with Christ up that dreaded hill.  We fail, we falter, we are picked up by others, we help along the way.  This is the ultimate path to God.  The path is already paved, we are just afraid to follow it.  Many people think religion is this good feeling we are all supposed to have.  And don't get me wrong, that will always be a part of it, but I see religion as a constant struggle.  If you are not struggling, you are not doing something right.  It should not be easy.  Our path is laden with struggles.  It is laden with pain.  It is laden with hope, with joy, with the knowledge that we are never alone on this path.  I have always loved the Stations of the Cross, I have always had a decent devotion to them.  But it has only been recently that I realized the significance of it to a fuller extent.  Its a scary path, a difficult path, a path that is hard to choose, but I choose Christ.  And by choosing Christ, I choose his path.  The path that He proved leads straight to the Father.