“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” 

Last weekend around the University I saw many parents lugging the belongings of their daughters and sons into the college dorms or up the stairs of college housing.  You could see a little exhaustion on their faces but it did not camouflage their love - they obviously were sacrificing much so that their children could go to college.

This past week I was also struck by Senator Joseph Biden’s son, Beau.  Beau introduced his father and told the story of the tragic 1972 car accident that killed his mother and sister and left him and his brother Hunter in the hospital for weeks.  The accident happened just after the November election but  before he took the oath of office.  Beau said that one of his earliest memories was being in the hospital and his Dad always at his side.  He said, “we, not the senate, was all he cared about.”  He decided not to take the oath of office - Joe Biden  said, “Delaware can get another Senator, but my boys cannot get another father.”  He was convinced by others to go forth and was sworn into office in the hospital, at the bedside of his sons.

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.”  This week I also read about a family’s back to school rituals.  The dad wrote, “Every August for the last 15 years or so, my wife and I have sat down to complete the task of synchronizing our calendars.  With school about to start, we need to mark down significant dates in the kid’s calendars, as well as our own.  The overriding goal of this planning is to ensure that we can be present to our kids, especially at significant moments.  Most of what a parent does can be summed up by this phrase: being present.  We are present to our children when they learn to walk, talk, and eventually ride a bike.  We are present to them at graduations - preschool, kindergarten, eighth grade, high school and college.  Through it all, we want them to know that they are not alone - that they are loved, supported and have our approval.  Children make a lot of noise about wanting things, but ultimately what they want is their parents’ undivided attention and approval - in other words, their presence.”

When it comes to the notion of presence, God is the ultimate parent.  In all of the moments of life, God is with us, supporting and caring for us, at times even carrying us.  Certainly we may struggle in recognizing God’s presence but like the parent on the sidelines, God is there.  We need only to open our eyes.

To take up the cross is to make choices - to sort out our priorities like parents do in order to be present to their family.  They literally die to self in love for their children - they ‘crucify’ their own preferences in order that their children may live in the grace of knowing that they are loved and supported and accepted.  And it is not just parents and their children - it is adult children caring for their aging parents, grandparents caring for grandchildren, neighbors reaching out to neighbors, strangers helping the needy, the lost, the forgotten, the rejected of society - even enemies loving enemies.  Following Christ - embracing the cross -  is certainly not what our present culture supports - it is a foreign thought in this ego centered, ‘me-first’ society that we live in.  But it is the Christian path that we are called to as complex and as simple as it is:   Dying to self in love for the other - Christ did it for us and calls us to do the same.  Christ invites us to take up the cross, not out of a sense of self-loathing or pessimism, but out of a sense of conviction and hope that the demands of the cross will result in the fullness of life and love of the Easter promise.  “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.  And let us never forget, there is the promise which follows:  “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”