Transcript of the Video Above

Daily reflections for Lenten Easter, written by Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI.

When I was a young boy, my mother gave me a holy card, an adaptation of a famous painting by Holman Hunt, ‘Light of the World’. In the version my mother gave me, we see behind a locked door a man huddled and paralyzed by a fear and darkness of some kind.

Outside the door stands Jesus with a lantern, knocking, ready to relieve the man of his burden. But there’s a hitch. The door only has a knob on the inside. Jesus cannot enter unless the man first unlocks the door. There’s the implication that God cannot help unless we first let God in.

Fair enough? Not exactly. What the cross of Christ reveals is that when we are so paralyzed by fear and overcome by darkness that we can no longer help ourselves, when we have reached the stage where we can no longer open the door to let light and life in, God can still come through our locked doors, stand inside our fear and paralysis and breathe out peace.

The love that is revealed in Jesus, suffering and death. A love that is so other centered that it can fully forgive and embrace its executioners, can melt frozen hearts, penetrate the walls of fear death, descend into our private hells, and there breathe out peace.

The cross of Christ does not stand helpless before a locked door.