NAILS

 

“As Christ stretched out His beautiful craftsman’s hands and composed His blameless feet on the hard wood of the cross to receive the nails, He was reaching out to countless men through all time: as He stretched his body on that great tree that was to flower with His life forever, He gave Himself to be made one with all those who in every generation to come would willingly bind and fasten themselves irrevocably to the cross, for the love of God and the love of men.

 For all through time for those who love Christ and who want to be one with Him, love and the cross would be inseparable; but because Christ willed that He should be nailed to the cross Himself in His human nature, love will always predominate and redeem the suffering of the cross.

 As the three nails were driven home into the wood, fastening Him to it irrevocably, Christ gave Himself to all those men and women who in the years to come would nail themselves to His cross by the three vows of religion – poverty, chastity, and obedience; those wise ones who know the weakness of human nature, who know how easily the will can falter when the sweetness of the first consolation of prayer is over; how hard and bleak the winter of the spirit when its springtide and its summer and harvesting seem passed forever; how hard to go on faithfully clinging to the Christ life with only one’s own weak will to drive one.  Christ, receiving the nails, gave Himself to those men and women who would nail themselves by binding vows to Himself upon the cross, who would have the ability to remain true to their chosen life because their hands and feet are put into His hands and feet, and they are held onto the cross by the nails that held Him.

 He gave himself in that moment to all those men and women who would pledge themselves to Him and to one another with the vows in matrimony, the three blessed nails of human love safeguarding husbands and wives from the assaults of temptation in every circumstance of the world, the vows to love, honor, and obey.

He gave himself to all those converts who bind themselves to the laws of the church and all those Christians who persevere in the faith, nailed to it by their own baptismal vows, no matter what hardships it may involve them in; nailed to it willingly because they know well that without Christ they can do nothing, and that Christ in this world is inseparable from His cross.

And with what great tenderness, with what depths of understanding, Christ gave Himself in that hour on Calvary to all those whom He would indwell – Religious, married people, ordinary Christians, trying to adhere to Him, not through emotion, not through sentimentality, but by uniting their wills to His, and binding themselves irrevocably to him.  With what love He gave himself to them, knowing how they too would be considered to be fools, would be mocked, and even looked upon with distrust and anxiety by their own people – by those who loved them…

…Despite the fact that in many countries of the world today, to openly vow yourself to religion is to put your head into the noose, to invite persecution!

Not only would the Religious be thought to be fools, but those married men and women who were faithful and compelled themselves to be faithful to their three vows – whose love and whose fidelity to love is not that which the world of today can understand.

…To all these Christ reached out across the years when He was nailed to the cross.  He identified Himself with them; He accepted their limitations; He gave them His will.  For them as well as for Himself, His prayer was uttered forever: “Father, not my will but thy will be done.”     (Caryll Houselander)

 Art: Kevin Rolly, Los Angeles