Mark 8:34–9:1

 

This Sunday I was not bowing down before the Cross in church.

 

I was at John Wayne Airport, sick enough to be tired of myself, with last week’s infection now making a side trip into my ear canal, a backpack full of dirty clothes dragging at one shoulder, and one noble goal in view:

 

coffee.

 

Not prayer.
Not patience.
Not meekness.
Not the Jesus Prayer rising like incense from a grateful heart.

 

Coffee.

 

And not just any coffee. My favorite airport coffee place.

 

I could see it. I could see the line too: a row of not-so-bright-eyed morning travelers queued up in that particular airport way that says, none of us are well, but all of us have somewhere to be.

 

I looked at the line.
I looked at my body.
I looked at my mood.

 

“Coffee? Wait that long? Nope.”

 

Not heroic suffering, exactly—just one more small, ridiculous moment in which my soul got found out.”

 

Because beneath the small absurdity of the too-long coffee line was the larger truth of the weekend: I was weary. Grateful, yes. Deeply grateful. 

 

I had just spent time with my dad. We had warm days in the sun. We had quiet moments together. I held his hand. He is doing well, and I know enough to give thanks for that without pretending everything is easy.

 

And yet.

 

Anyone who has loved an aging parent knows this weather. Gratitude and sorrow arrive together. Tenderness and fatigue sit in the same chair. One leaves with a full heart and a tired body. One leaves carrying more than a backpack.

 

I was grateful for my small-town doctor too—grateful enough that I could text him on a weekend and get help, which still feels faintly miraculous in the age of portals and hold music.

Gratitude was there.

Weariness was there too.

 

That mixed condition—thankful and tired, comforted and sad, held up and worn down—felt very much like the real state of my soul this week.

 

And of all Sundays to be in transit, this was the Sunday of the Veneration of the Cross.

I needed that Sunday.

 

I needed the Church to place the Cross before my eyes in the middle of Lent and say, in effect: Child, you are not finished yet. Rest here. Look here. Take courage and keep going.

 

Instead, I was in an airport.

 

And what I missed most was not “content.” It was not hearing a sermon online. It was not dutifully checking the liturgical box from a distance. What I missed most was bowing low and singing with everyone else:

 

Before Thy Cross, we bow down in worship, O Master, and Thy holy Resurrection we glorify.

 

That hymn does something to the soul when you sing it with your body. It is not information. It is surrender with your face to the floor.

 

We did watch the Liturgy online—the sermon, then the ending—but I could not bear to “watch” the Eucharist from a distance. 

 

It felt too much like standing outside a family feast and pressing my face to the window. That may not be theologically precise language, but it is the truth of how it felt.

 

This is one reason I love Orthodoxy: she refuses to remain an idea. Faith has fingerprints. Knees. Candles. Flowers around the Cross. Human voices. Bodies bowing low. The Cross in the middle of the nave. 

 

The whole thing says what modern life keeps trying to help us forget: we are creatures. We need to worship with our whole selves.

 

And then came my less-than-heroic confession.

 

My husband picked me up from the airport with a hot meal waiting in the car and hot tea with honey and lemon.

 

A saint, in other words.

 

When I saw him, I hugged him hard and then, far too quickly, blurted, “Coffee, I need coffee!” while pointing toward the airport café.

 

There it was.

 

My Third Sunday of Lent.

 

My husband had brought me warmth, care, food, honey, lemon, tea, and the sort of practical love that looks very much like grace in ordinary clothes.

And I, after a very brief and underdeveloped moment of gratitude, was already lunging toward buy me this.

 

Very little “deny yourself” there.

Very little noble cross-bearing.

Very little calm, obedient acceptance of what had actually been given.

 

Our Gospel for this Sunday is not subtle. Christ says: “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.”

 

That line exposed me this week.

 

Because, if I am honest, I like the privileges of life and the comforts of life much more than I like the Cross. I like relief. I like convenience. I like my burdens lightened promptly and preferably with espresso. I would very much like Christ’s healing without the bitter medicine. 

 

I would like resurrection without much dying.

 

I wanted consolation faster than I wanted Christ.

I wanted the sweetness without the wood.

I can be very devout about the Cross, provided it does not inconvenience me.

 

The Cross, planted in the middle of Lent, says otherwise.

 

One of the most beautiful images the Church gives us for this Sunday is the image of the tree. In Eden there stood the tree near which our first parents failed. In the middle of Lent the Church places before us another tree—the life-giving wood of the Cross.

 

That image has been haunting me.

 

There is a tree in the middle again.

 

Once, humanity grasped wrongly.
Now, the Church invites us to cling rightly.

 

Once, a tree became the place of exile.
Now, the Tree becomes the place of return.

 

That is not didactic religion. That is mercy.

 

St. John Chrysostom called the Cross “the hope of Christians.” He knew what the Church still knows: the Cross is not only what Christ endured. It is where He meets us.

 

That is where the airport scene stopped being merely an airport scene, because I was not only missing coffee.

 

I was resisting the Cross.

 

Not in some grand cinematic way. Nothing so noble. More in the small, ridiculous way I know best: wanting the trip without the inconvenience, the comfort without the waiting, the sweetness without the bitterness, the care without the cost, the tea without first mourning the espresso I did not get.

 

That is one reason the story of Marah belongs so naturally to this Sunday. Israel comes to bitter water in the wilderness, and the wood God shows Moses sweetens it. The Church reads that as a sign of the Cross: the wood in the middle of the wilderness, the wood in the middle of Lent, the wood that makes bitter things bearable and even life-giving.

 

This week, my bitter water was not dramatic.

 

It was illness.
Travel.
Leaving Dad.
Missing church.
Wanting comfort immediately.
Being more attached to a cup of coffee than to self-denial.

 

It would be funny if it were not so revealing.

 

Then again, because God is merciful, it is both.

 

St. Ignatius Brianchaninov writes with the sort of severity that can save a person from her own nonsense. He reminds us to keep our eyes on the one sinner for whom we will give an account before God: ourselves.

 

And that is where this Sunday’s Gospel finally stopped being “about carrying crosses” and became a mirror.

 

What does it mean to take up my cross this week?

 

It means not merely enduring grand suffering nobly, but receiving the life actually given to me from the hand of God: the weakness, the travel, the waiting, the sorrow of leaving Dad, the missed Liturgy, the tea instead of coffee, the husband whose practical love deserved more gratitude than complaint, the body that still needed healing, the soul that still needed softening.

 

The Cross is not always spectacular.

 

Sometimes it looks like not getting your favorite coffee because the line is too long and you are too sick and the tea your husband brought is the better gift anyway.

 

Sometimes it looks like being grateful and sad at the same time.

 

Sometimes it looks like knowing exactly what hymn the Church is singing without you and whispering it under your breath in an airport.

 

Sometimes it looks like this:

 

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

 

The Cross stood in the middle of the church this Sunday.

 

I was not there to bow before it with my parish family.

 

But perhaps, by grace, it stood in the middle of my little wilderness too:

in the middle of the airport.
in the middle of the longing.
in the middle of the weariness.
in the middle of the cheap grace I keep preferring.
in the middle of the life I actually have.

 

There is a tree in the middle again.

 

And this time, Christ does not say, “Stay away.”

 

He says, “Take up your cross and follow Me.”

 

Glory to God for hot tea, for long roads, for the hand of an aging father held in the sun, and for the Cross of Christ planted exactly where weary travelers need it most.

 

Perpetua

What does it mean: to take up your cross? It means the willing acceptance, at the hand of Providence, of every means of healing, bitter though it may be, that is offered. Do great catastrophes fall on you? Be obedient to God’s will, as Noah was. Is sacrifice demanded of you? Give yourself into God’s hands with the same faith as Abram had when he went to sacrifice his son. Is your property ruined? Do your children die suddenly? Suffer it all with patience, cleaving to God in your heart, as Job did. Do your friends forsake you, and you find yourself surrounded by enemies? Bear it all without grumbling, and with faith that God’s help is at hand, as the apostles did. Are you condemned to death for Christ? Be thankful to God for such an honour, like thousands of Christian martyrs. Nothing will be sought of you that has not been done before, but you will rather follow the example of many — apostles, saints, confessors and martyrs — who have done Christ’s will.” 

 

— St. Nikolai Velimirovic, Homilies, Volume 1