Weekly Inspiration (3/20/25)

“Jesus tells his disciples that anyone who wants to follow him must “take up their cross daily.” I love how Jesus uses the word “daily.” Jesus didn’t have to include that word. Jesus could have just said that anyone who wants to follow him has to take up their cross. The fact that Jesus purposefully put in the word “daily” gets at something important to the Christian experience.”

Br. Jack Crowley
Society of Saint John the Evangelist

Through their midst

by Steve Garnaas-Holmes

             They drove him out of the town,
             and led him to the brow of the hill,
             so that they might hurl him off the cliff.
             But he passed through the midst of them
             and went on his way.
                                      —Luke 4.29-30

He didn't argue with them,
didn't fight or outsmart them,
made no clever ninja moves.

In the arms of the breeze
at the cliff edge,
light falling like rain,

before they did something stupid
he gave himself to them fully,
forgiving them already,

which raised a question
that doused their shouting,
that spoke a silence

that cut through their first-stone piety,
that passed through to their midst,
their center,

and finally
they were not
so sure of themselves,

which was not so much
his salvation
as theirs.