SWEEPING TRUST
"Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?"- MT 20:22
In today's gospel, Jesus invites us to hold the cup of life and look deeply into our lives at what makes us human. He encourages us to cultivate time for introspection, reflection, contemplation, and prayer, as well as asking ourselves, "How am I holding up my cup of life in its joys and sorrows? Am I asking Jesus to help lift my cup?" Drinking the cup without knowing the answers can be the most heroic challenge of our spiritual journey. It is a giving of the heart, handing over our expectations, excuses, and self-invented defenses that are no longer serving us. It asks for sweeping trust in God, the same trust that made Jesus drink the cup to the bottom.
This Lenten season, I found myself encircled with love and tenderness. Behind our Zoom boxes, God created space for three friends to cry in the presence of another, guiding us gently into the private world of sorrow and the grief and heartache we continue to carry from our miscarriages. Each of us held a question for which there is no answer. I wanted to physically wrap my arms around them as we cried the seemingly endless tears for the terrible longing in our souls to be with our angels. We lifted our cups and parted our inner curtains to see one another. Grace and mercy happened. Drinking our cup together reminded me that we are not alone in our grief and how compassion is about entering into that pain in such a way that one is no longer an observer but an integral participant.
As we continue to adjust to a new normal where masks conceal our faces, it forces us to look at one another's eyes - sometimes with warmth, other times with tears. For the first time, in a long time, as human beings, we are given a chance to see one another genuinely and stoke the embers of connection. The cup of life is full of sorrows and joys. Will we hold our cups and claim them as our own? Will we lift our cups to offer blessings to others? Will we drink to the bottom and trust that God will fill us with His living and steady water?
Lord, help me hold my cup tenderly as I continue to walk towards my inner home.
Tam Lontok