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Dear Covenant Family,
We are in the midst of Holy Week, walking with Jesus on the long and winding road that leads to the cross, and ultimately to resurrection. As with the season of Lent in general, this week is a time when we dwell with the sorrows we usually avoid- a friend’s betrayal, loneliness, the searing pain of loss, the rituals of death, wounds, nails, injustice, darkness. What do we do with it all? How do we not look away? Can we turn heartbreak into compassion, our tears of sorrow into tears of joy? Can God do that for us?
If you’d like read the story of the Last Supper and Crucifixion of Jesus, maybe with a cup of coffee, find Matthew chapters 26 and 27 in your own Bibles or online here. In the end only God can turn our fear into faith, our despair into hope, and our woundedness into compassion for others.
In her book, The Cup of our Life: A Guide for Spiritual Growth, Sister Joyce Rupp (O.S.M.) shares how ordinary cups can become sacred vessels that draw us closer to God. Here is a portion of one of her poems on “the cup of compassion”:
my cup of compassion holds tears of the world;
it overflows with sorrow, struggles, and sadness,
my cup of compassion holds the cries of children, unfed, unloved, unsheltered, uneducated, unwanted,
my cup of compassion holds the screams of war, the tortured, slain, imprisoned, the raped, the disabled,
my cup of compassion holds the bruised and battered, victims of incest and abuse, gang wars, violent crimes,
my cup of compassion holds the voice of silent ones….
my cup of compassion holds the emptiness of the poor, the searing pain of racism, the impotency of injustice,
my cup of compassion holds the heartache of loss, the sigh of the dying…
my cup of compassion holds the agony of the earth, species terminated, air polluted, land destroyed, rivers with refuse,
my cup of compassion I hold it to my heart where the Divine dwells, where love is stronger than death and disaster. ~ Joyce Rupp (p 112)
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