In Luke 9:22, Jesus states, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”

This explicit reminder to set our sights on life beyond our earthly confines gives us strength when our earthly crosses are particularly heavy, and likewise prompts us to become less focused on investing in our mortal lives. Christ suffered, died, and rose again to make eternal life possible for us; however, if we prioritize the temptations of this life, we will not be ready to receive it.

Christ does not desire our suffering; yet, during our lives, we will inevitably experience it. Pain – the death of a loved one, the loss of a job, a serious injury or terminal illness, depression, chronic pain, and relationship difficulties – tests our ability to take up our crosses and continue to set our sights on life with Christ.

As Henri Nouwen states, “Nobody escapes being wounded. We all are wounded people, whether physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually. The main question is not ‘How can we hide our wounds?’ so we don’t have to be embarrassed, but ‘How can we put our woundedness in the service of others?’” Christ’s wounds have served us by granting the potential to redeem our lost souls. He calls us to look within our own suffering to serve others with empathy, love, and understanding, and to unite our suffering with his.

When I have experienced difficulties, I have often found it hard to hear Christ’s call to “offer up” my suffering or to unite my pain with his. When I am overwhelmed, I tend to have tunnel vision and an inability to look beyond the present moment, and even outside of myself; therefore, I need Lent.

Lent is an opportunity to exercise my spiritual muscles – to practise small inconveniences and sufferings to ready my heart and mind for life’s true tests of faith.

Lent allows me to deliberately take up small crosses such as making time for extra prayer, giving alms, examining my conscience and admitting my weakness; to abstain from foods and earthly pleasures in order to empathize with those who have less and to remove the distractions of this earth so that I can focus on the development of my soul.

In so doing, I prepare for life’s heaviest crosses, whether they are my own or whether I’m assisting another in carrying theirs.

The acts of sacrificing, suffering, and admitting our faults and vulnerability are never easy. Yet the soul that survives these moments, with Christ, radiates life and beauty.

This image is reflected succinctly in the children’s story The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, when the Rabbit asks the Skin Horse about “becoming real.”

“Does it hurt?” the rabbit asked the Skin Horse.

“Oh yes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “Sometimes it hurts a lot. But when you are real, you don’t mind being hurt … Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” 

Taking up our cross is about keeping ourselves “real.” It involves removing our egos from daily life – stripping ourselves of pride, accepting our vulnerability, and offering our bare souls to love and serve others in Christ’s name, even when doing so is difficult.

As Ronald Knox explains, “the first two gestures (of the Sign of the Cross) form the letter “I” and the next two cross it out. That’s what the cross of Jesus meant and means. The path of discipleship is the path of self-sacrificing love – and that means the path of suffering.”

May the Sign of the Cross erase our tendency to focus on “I” and remember the ultimate “self-sacrificing love” provided by the Cross of Calvary. May this sign of our faith be more than a gesture, but a true commitment to take up our own crosses daily and follow Christ.