My cross to bear

"We carry God in the fragile vessel of our humanity."

It's been almost two months since I heard this sentence at a homily from my parish priest, and it has stayed with me. Now at the weekend where the Feast of the Holy Cross coincides with the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the sentence rings and beats against my chest with nowhere to turn to.

I remember exactly where I was when I first heard the news of the September 11 attacks. I was drowning in martinis at m9. It was after dark and when my colleagues and friends reported via SMS that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, I snuffed and laughed that it was a hoax. I said that if what was reported was true, it was akin to war on the US. 

I was wrong... Text after text came. A second plane. The crumbling of the South Tower. I got home and saw the devastation... I was confounded by the scenes I saw before me on the telly. "It can't be real.... it can't be true..." I thought, knowing very well that I was in denial. I stayed in front of the television watching wreck after wreck.... I tried calling and texting every friend I knew there.... (Thankfully after many hours I received news they got out okay.)

I couldn't understand what I saw before me. I did not think it was an act of malice to other humans, an act of killing. I thought that airport control had made serious mistakes. I was wrong.... Very wrong.

What had happened was a conscious choice. By some people who believed what they did was a declaration of their faith, of what they believed God is...

I'm not here to assign blame or anything like that. Yet, I can't help but think of that sentence "We carry God in the vessel of our fragile humanity." It is true. Everything we do is a reflection of our lives and what we believe in... God, to each of us, and to one another is seen through our choices. When we make the right choices, the moral choices, the good choices, the unselfish choices, we experience God in kindness and love. When we don't make those choices.... well...

There is a catechism teaching that says God is the same yesterday, today and forever. That what changes is our understanding of Him. At the back of my mind, in the depths of my soul, I find it humbling, almost amusing that God invests Himself in us; we who are uncomprehending, weak, vulnerable and fragile... I find it unfathomable He deigns us enough to mirror this great gift called love. Yet that is what we are called to do... despite all the hurt we receive even when we love others. 

So here I am. Still muddled and befuddled, sorting out the madness of my life, my humanity. I am slowly losing understanding of how I fit into my faith, yet comforted that if I carry love in my heart and able to care, that it is enough.

It is my cross to bear.