Open Arms
Last Friday, I arrived at Children’s Hospital just in time to be with a family who had been told their 17-year-old son and brother would be taken off life-support after having suffered an unexpected heart attack a few days prior. Calvary came hard and fast into Room 4017 that afternoon.
As a priest, the Church gives me the formal words of what to pray in that moment. I thank God for that gift. Beyond that, however, the Spirit has taught me to stay quiet, to be humbly present, and to silently pray into the pain and the grief of those who mourn.
As I stood at the bedside of this dying boy, I found myself watching his father, a man who kept vigil at his son’s bedside and barely slept since the ambulance rushed him to the emergency department. Maybe I was attuned more closely to him because I had just lost my own dad; perhaps I watched with great attention in order to see how a Dad grieves the loss of his only son.
What I noticed most especially with this father was how he used his arms, solid from years of trades work and firefighting. When his younger daughter walked into the hospital room, he held those arms open, and she ran running into that embrace of strength. As his wife held the hand of her son during the Anointing sacrament, this man used his arms to embrace her and hold her close to his chest. And when the saintly nurses removed some of the tubes and wires from the body of this gentle boy, his father leaned into the bed and wrapped his arms across him, crying out in anguish: “I will never stop loving you.”
Every act of love from the father in that hospital room was one that came with open arms. Arms to heal, hold, mourn, protect and love unconditionally. Arms open to all who came to him.
What strikes me about this Gospel used to celebrate the Solemnity of Christ Our King is one detail that might have gone unnoticed otherwise. If you were to reread this passage from Luke or if I were to proclaim it aloud a second time, notice that not once is the word ‘cross’ ever used.
We know, of course, that Jesus is hanging on the Cross as the crowd and soldiers jeer. We know – because this Calvary story is so familiar to us – that Jesus is suspended between heaven and earth, willingly taking on our sinfulness so we can be set free for eternity. We know He is there as this scene plays out with arms wide open, nothing to shelter or protect Him; no one in that moment to defend or rescue Him. Treated with hatred and scorn as a criminal would be, he responded with an invitation to every soul: Come to me you who labor and are burdened. Be not afraid. Forgive them for they know not what they do. I thirst.
All words from One who didn’t look much like a King in that moment. All words that come from a God whose arms are held open to all people for all time.
Most failed to recognize or accept those open arms. On the contrary, those arms were rejected.
As we end our liturgical year and prepare for the season of Advent, it is necessary to ask ourselves the question: how am I rejecting the open arms and Cross of Christ?
Am I like the rulers and the soldiers, living life in such a way that my actions – my sinfulness – puts myself as the center of attention and makes me selfish? Every time I gossip, steal, cheat, ignore times of prayer and/or remain unchaste, I am jeering at Christ’s open arms. “I don’t need them; I don’t want them. My own arms are enough.”
Equally as dangerous: the attitude and closed heart of the bad thief, the one who knew his criminality placed him on a cross and still refused the mercy being offered to him on Calvary. His mocking statement “Save yourself and us” was one that cries out in angry disbelief that he is actually worthy of being saved; that God would not possibly waste His time on someone like him. Many of us, especially in those recesses of our hearts where we often dare not tread, believe the very same lie: I am not worthy of His open arms. Like the impenitent thief, we push God’s arms away from us.
How tragic that most of us live in such a way that God’s arms are ignored, avoided or thought of as too harsh to embrace our wounded and hurting selves.
Perhaps, then, the deepest, truest message of Christ the King Sunday is this: Like the repentant thief, accept the mercy of the One who went to Calvary to save us and set us free. Allow His open arms to forgive every part of you that is broken and sinful and filled with shame and regret. Allow this end-of-the-year and the season of Advent to be the time in which our hearts cry out: “Remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom.”
Remember me, Lord, when I stumble along the way. Remember me, Lord, when I don’t love others or myself as I should. Remember, Lord, when I live my life with closed arms. Remember me, Lord.
It takes a lot of grace and humility to come to the Lord in such a way. I dare say that this act of surrender only comes when, like the good thief, we place our cross into that of our Savior’s and cling to his embrace. Paul in his letter to the Colossians hints at the power of such an act when he writes: “For in [Christ] all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross.”
We have a King not to be feared or hated. We have a King whose divine justice is tempered by loving mercy. We have a King whose embrace is that of a Shepherd, a Rescuer, a Healer. We have a King whose royalty and power is found in self-emptying, not vengeance. We have a King who knows his identity is found in his Sonship, and invites us to share in the very same relationship.
We have a King who has a Father, and that Father holds his Heart out to us through the open, crucified arms of His Son, crying out: Come to me.
No matter where you and I have been this past year, return to the Cross of Christ our King and place your own crosses and struggles, sins and anxieties right there where His Mercy flows. Return to the Cross of Christ our King, and let not selfishness or feelings of unworthiness keep you from accepting true love. Run to the Cross of Christ our King knowing that it is there that we find a Shepherd, not a tyrant. We are held by Selfless Love, not by a love that seeks selfish, self-centered adulation and praise. We are held by a Love that hangs from a Cross, embracing all those who come in humility and trust.
Back in 1963, a Jesuit priest from upstate Pennsylvania returned to America after having spent 23 years in Soviet prisons during World War II. Fr. Walter Ciszek was beaten, starved and forced to do hard manual labor in Siberia for decades. His family and religious community assumed he was dead. When he obtained freedom and returned to New York, he wrote this:
“There are moments of crisis in every life, moments of anxiety and fear, moments of frustration and terror. The Kingdom of Christ – that kingdom of justice and peace, of love and truth, has not yet been achieved on earth; it has begun, but much remains to be done before it can reach its fullness. Hatred still exists alongside love; the bad with the good; the sinner along with the saint. None of us can escape the tensions of this imperfect world, but by grace and with faith, we can carry our crosses and weather the crises of life, for God is always with us in those crosses. And this Kingdom of God will continue to grow in the same way it was established: by the daily and seemingly hidden lives of all who strive to do the will of the Father, just as Jesus did.”
That will is done with open arms, embracing the Cross.
It comes like a Father at the bedside of his beautiful dying son, embracing all who come while crying out from his very depths: “I will never stop loving you.”