Finding God’s Love in Our WoundsSample

The Cross as God’s Mirror

Saint Gregory the Great famously wrote, “We are changed into the one we see.” This is the idea that where you give your attention you give your heart, because whatever you focus on will bounce back onto you and change you. This means that gazing upon Jesus’ cross is not only an exercise in marveling at God’s love but also realizing that this love will bounce back to your heart and change you too!

When you see Jesus on the cross, you see him experience your secret addiction as his own. He feels the neglect you suffered as a child. He hears those ugly words spoken by parents, siblings, friends, and yourself as if they were spoken to him. He knows how you cruelly treated your family, and he feels their pain and yours. The cross is God saying that he wants to join you in those most shameful places, not watch from afar. He wants to feel those wounds with you, alongside you, and now, in the cross, he knows the precise pain that these wounds have caused you. And he wants to know all of this pain intimately because he wants to be with the real you.

Why do we need the cross as a mirror? Well, as I allowed my wife to kiss more of the wounds on my face, my soul began to experience a range of emotions. At first, I was enraged and wanted to scream. But that was nothing more than my fearful reaction to having someone so close to the vulnerable parts of me. As she continued undeterred, the emotion that finally came upon my soul was grief. I released so much pent-up pain, scarcely able to believe that here in the places where I felt abjectly ugly, someone was revealing how much they loved me. It wasn’t just me marveling at my wife’s love. It was also how that love was bouncing back and transforming me.

This means we aren’t just marveling at God’s love on the cross. It’s also the realization that God is kissing our real, wounded lives and stories and transforming them. On the cross the love of God reaches into the depths of your most shameful moments and, if you stare long enough, brings healing to those wounds by saying, “There is no wound too ugly for my love. And it is my love alone that brings healing.”