Sunday Meditation: The Frustration of Lost Items

Today is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. My plan was to spend the day re-reading Louis de Wohl's wonderful historical novel, St. Helena and the True Cross. Only one problem. I can't find it. The shelf with Mary Windeatt's saint novels is where it should be, but it isn't. I remember reading it a few years ago so I know I own the book, but where did I put it?

I looked through my alphabetically arranged lives of the saints and it isn't there. Then I went upstairs where I have two shelves of biographies and it wasn't there either. So instead of spending the day following my intended pursuit, I will read the entry on St. Helena in Butler's Lives of the Saints and offer up my frustration for the poor souls in Purgatory. 

Remember Lepanto on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Why do we celebrate the Holy Cross? In ancient Rome, the cross was a symbol of shame, the instrument of capital punishment. It would be like our celebrating the exaltation of the electric chair. It sounds crazy when you think of it in that way, doesn't it? And yet, the instrument of torture and death, becomes for the Christian the reminder that Christ not only overcame death, but, in doing so, glorified the very instrument used to kill Him. Cardinal Jean Danielou, theologian and historian, reminds us of the reality of the cross we carry. It is a "feeling of being torn asunder...this inability of our heart to carry within itself simultaneously love of the most holy Trinity and love of a world alienated from the Trinity" which is "precisely the death agony" of Jesus, "an agony he calls on us to share." Yes, we are called to love a world that hates God.

This week brings specific reminders of that agonizing conflict as we reflect on the vicious hatred that resulted in the 9/11/2011 atrocity and Wednesday's murderous attack on embassies in Libya and Egypt. How does the Christian react to such evil?