Joseph Kreydt

Tag: Christ

  • The Pain of a Beloved’s Pain

    A handwritten page from a notebook containing a reflective text about dignity, self-worth, and the implications of treating others as divine.
    When someone sees you as a god — a woman degrades herself because she sees you as the one who gives her value — the loving response always involves some sort of crucifixion. For the undignified woman, your own desires and any potential response which does not aim to restore her dignity must be killed, no matter how painfully, in such a way that her own dignity can be restored without shame.

    The pain Christ feels is not because our sins hurt him. It’s because it hurts to see a beloved one degrade or afflict their self. In the crucifixion, he takes our degradation and affliction upon himself. That is the preferable pain when someone you love is hurting.

  • Enebrimēsato

    In this world, there are places with God and places without God. That is for a very good reason. If there were no places without God, we would have nowhere to run from him.

    For God’s love to be real, we must have the freedom to refuse it, to refuse him. It’s not true love if it’s not a gift, and it’s not a gift unless it can be refused. If we couldn’t refuse it, it would be an imposition, not a gift.

    God makes his love a gift by giving us places to go where his love is not, where he is not. But a place without God, the source of all life, is a place with death. Death is the cost of a world where love exists.

    Because we are loved, death is a part of this world.

    Today, Catholics celebrate Passion Sunday, in which we remember Christ being deeply troubled upon seeing his friend, Mary of Bethany, weeping.

    In John 11:33, Christ’s behavior is described with an intense Greek word, enebrimēsato, that translates to something like “he snorted in spirit.” Christ groaned from the depths of his soul, like a sobbing child, upon seeing the pain that death has caused his friend. He grieves at the pain caused by loving imperfect lovers.

  • Adoration, Wednesday Night

    On My Knees, In Adoration Wednesday Night

    Show me a miracle,
    One I don’t have to believe,
    One I can see.

    I want to know.
    Then I promise I’ll follow
    Wherever you lead.

    I know I’m not blessed.
    I know I’m not happy.

    I know I am aching
    For something I need.

    I see the pooling blood.
    But I can’t figure out
    What is making me bleed.

    I know this: I am lonely.
    I am lonely, please,
    Come close to me.

    Show me a miracle,
    One I can see.
    Show me a miracle.

    At the End of Adoration Wednesday Night

    After showing him this mess of mud,
    This man who bled water and sweated blood,
    I had no will to leave,

    And so I clung, like a child, on my knees,
    Until I recalled something,
    From where I do not know.

    It said, "I will be with you,
    Whatever happens, trust me.
    Go."