This apt piece of wisdom given in the midst of the gloomy depths of an epic journey most perfectly applies to our Christian life. Our’s is a pilgrim journey: a quest for perfect life, truth, and beauty; ultimately, this is what we seek; it is what we want; it is what we need, but we don’t always seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness. Rather, we chase after fool’s gold only to find that all that glitters is not gold. It takes a much more discerning eye to see that “all that is gold does not glitter” –at least not initially. Through the light of reason, we can see the natural order speak to this truth: in order to achieve some higher good or live a higher life–to attain that gold, one must suffer through that which does not glitter. Every athlete knows that it takes much training to excel, no student earns a degree without long nights of studying, no couple owns a home without struggling to make ends meet, no worker gets a promotion without long, underpaid hours in the mailroom: no guts, no glory; no pain, no gain.
When this light of natural reason is betrothed to the heat of super-natural faith in the flames of the Holy Spirit, we see the continuation of the ordinary things and circumstances of life leading up and converging at the cross of Our Divine Savior. Here in pinioned hands and whipped and bruised and bloodied carnality we see what we don’t want to see: the divine and harsh truth to which all those all-nighters and internships were pointing. On that cross where Christ married his Bride the Church, formed from His pierced side in the sacramental waters of baptism and His precious Eucharistic blood, so too is our God-given natural human reason married to divinely-bestowed super-natural faith in the completion of the phrase: “No guts, no glory; no pain, no gain; no cross, no crown; no Good Friday, no Easter Sunday.”
Our crucified Lord now has risen in the triumph of the resurrection and has been raised on up through the heavens to be seated in glory at the right hand of the Father– the pledge and promise of what our human nature is to be if we but follow after Him. This life is our pilgrimage, heaven is our home, the life of Christ is our path. As we pray these sorrowful mysteries on this Tuesday, step by step I am brought the image of the footsteps of Our Blessed Lord from the clay of Gethsemane–literally Christened with beads of bloody sweat, forming as it were a crimson rosary of redemption– step by step to the ring of steps about a pillar of injustice, step by step to the curl-toed steps of shame and humiliation under crown of thorns, step by step to the stubbed, dusty, and bloodied steps up the rocky slopes of Calvary, step by final step to the pierced feet pushing an exhausted and spent corpus up for air breath by breath to redeem us sin by sin.
We are given time. Time, that oft-wasted gift, can be used as we please, and use as we please we do. I used my time Tuesday morning (the only day I managed to show up) to treasure an extra 10 minutes of my precious and dear sleep. I had to run to catch up to everyone on Maple Street. Others were there who journeyed from far-away campus to get to the starting line at the 35th St. Mary statue. My bed is 30 seconds away, but it was more precious to me that day. That’s how I spent my time. In perfect day-late-and-a-dollar-short form, I in penance refused myself breakfast with everyone at the Newman Center until I had finished up the lost decades I had missed. We each must decide how to use our time; will we lie on a deathbed of shame trying in vain to make up for lost decades? Will judgement day be suspended to give the dice-shakers and the by-standers time to throw on sack-cloth and ashes and join the saints at the foot of the cross– to give the State time to stoop to a bow before its King? Perhaps. But why not already be there? We have about the cross the archetypes of all humanity, for Our Blessed Lord said, “When I am lifted up, I will draw all men to myself.” There is the State exercising political expediency, the brutes and the guards quickly resorting to violence and as they mockingly wait for a miracle, gamble to bide their time, the many by-standers giving a second glance to see if this latest execution might satisfy their gluttony for entertainment, the agents of Satan who conspire against the just, the greedy who find 30 pieces of silver more valuable than the loyalty owed his Lord, the 10 who feared and hid in despaired, the Cyreneian who unexpectedly found himself carrying out the work of redemption, the women who prayed and wept out of sorrow for the price of sin, the woman who saw in a criminal slated for execution the face of God and so was given the Veron-icon the true-image of that face, and, Mary who would become our mother, John the beloved, and Magdala, ever the three to be found at the foot of the cross: innocence, priesthood, and repentance.
Many options have we, every day a gift to choose an option; now, all we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us.
In Christ,
-Jeff
