small things with great love

the Sixth Station:

“He had no majestic bearing to catch our eye,
no beauty to draw us to him.
He was spurned and avoided by men,
a man of suffering, knowing pain,
Like one from whom you turn your face,
spurned, and we held him in no esteem.
Yet it was our pain that he bore,our sufferings he endured.” Isaiah 53:2-4

“And the king will say to them in reply, ‘Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.’” Matthew 25:40

I grew up going to the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday with my family.  I think I understood after a while that Good Friday was not ever going to be a day of fun, and the Stations of the Cross were not ever going to be a pleasant experience.  It was hard at first to be a child with the attention span of a gnat having to kneel, stand up, kneel, hear sad things about Jesus, and then do it again. 13 more times.  It was definitely a marathon, not a sprint.  When I was finally able to keep my wits about me and truly mediate on each individual station and discover what there was to learn about Christ, humanity, and myself, through them, they became so much more than just the requisite sad/tedious thing we did on Good Friday.  


They still are not easy to get through, and they were not intended to be.  The Gospels are wonderful, but their accounts of the brutal Way of the Cross are brief, and simply reading them does not give much insight into that painful walk Jesus took between the Praetorium and Golgotha.  The Stations, for me, fill in that gap and make me pause and really consider what Jesus endured as He carried the Cross.  The Cross that He would be nailed to at the end of His walk.  The stations that are my favorite are those that portray an interaction between Jesus and another person He meets along the Way.  An interaction that was probably the most painful moment of these lives, and the most blessed as well.


The Blessed Mother, who was the one that remained faithful to Him from before His conception, until after His death.  Never wavering, never leaving His side.  She was the first disciple and the one who remained ever-faithful.  Simon of Cyrene, who helped bear the weight of the Cross he himself had a part in placing on Jesus’ shoulders.

Veronica is the third person Jesus meets on the Way of the Cross. In my own personal meditations, she has become one of my most treasured companions as I seek to accompany Jesus along the way. 


I hope and pray that I would have been like Veronica.  Looking at Love Himself, suffering for His unfathomable Love for her and all of humanity, and not caring at all for the furious crowd or the impatient soldiers.  All she could see was Jesus.  All she could think of was loving, comforting, and serving Him.  She did not seek to do so with violence or shouts that would have simply added to the cacophony of chaos that was already surrounding them.  She had the tenderness inherent to her nurturing, womanly heart.  And she did what her heart demanded of her with the courage of a lion.  She was in danger, wiping the face of a condemned criminal.  Perhaps she felt a stab of fear go through her heart right before she took her first step.  But, I imagine, the closer she drew to Jesus, the more clear His face became, the more muffled the noise and turmoil around  them seemed.  She did the one thing she could think of with the little she had available.

As Blessed Mother Theresa said:  “We cannot do great things.  We can only do small things with great love”

She did nothing that appeared great.  It more likely appeared foolish and ultimately, not that helpful.  Jesus probably would not have felt, with all of His innumerable wounds, much relief from His face being wiped.   But there have been times I have felt so sick that nothing anyone does makes me feel better, and the one thing that makes a difference is my momma looking at me with all the love in her tender, nurturing, womanly heart, and placing her hand on my forehead.  No words could replace that.  No medicine satisfies the need for the touch of human love.  From feeling completely isolated because all the other kids are at school and you are upstairs on the couch feeling awful, to having that touch of love that I knew was coming when I heard momma climbing the stairs.  


The comfort that the touch of St. Veronica must have given Jesus, He Who felt most abandoned and isolated from humanity during His Passion.  He Who was spit upon by His own creatures for whom He was dying of Love.  To know the tender care of one of His children during those moments of sheer agony is the one thing that He must have desired most of all.  

My prayer is that we all could be like St. Veronica.  To use whatever we are given, no matter how very small, to do small things with great love.  To see the face of Jesus in those around us and to offer, without counting the cost, whatever love we are able to.  

Have a beautiful, love-filled Friday.