Carrying the Cross.
Life with a just-started-high-school kid is busy. The comfort of having all three kids at the one school has slipped away and I now need to coordinate permission notes, school fees and parents evening at two different locations. I'm treading water and slipping under a little.
Sian came home on Thursday evening with a message about a Mass she needed to attend on Friday at 6.15pm. She was carrying something at it. A cross? That's about as much as my brain retained. All I could think about was getting her to tennis lessons at 5pm on Friday. The Mass message kind of slipped to the back of my brain. Until Sian mentioned in again as she came off the tennis court Friday evening. At 6pm.
It was raining. She was soaked to the skin. We drove home, got changed in 30 seconds and left Byron, Gar and Rhiannon in the comfort of a dry house and rushed out into the rain again to drive to the High School. Except that's when Sian said it wasn't a school Mass. Well not a High School Mass. It was a local St Josephs one. My heart sank a little. If it wasn't to impress the new High School did we really need to go? The good news was that our local St Josephs is much nearer. We were driving at this point so we carried on and pulled into the half empty car park.
I couldn't help but think wistfully about the bottle of red wine on the table that I would rather be drinking.... We went inside the church to find only a small handful of people there. And only one other girl Sians age. Her friend from a year above her in school who had been the one to talk her into coming. I asked around as to what Sian was to carry?
And then I saw it. The huge World Youth day cross still laying on the roof-rack of a car outside in the rain. The cross that we had first encountered almost 3 years ago in Speers Park. The cross that brought back memories of making bracelets at Rathmines park, hosting teenage girls from Norway, seeing the Pope in Sydney. And here it was back in our small church. And Sian was going to help carry it in with other members of our parish. Drying the raindrops off the rich brown wood. Standing it into its metal stand at the front of the church. Sitting there through the the next hour of liturgy. Glad that I was there. Glad Sian had been talked into going by Claire. Glad that the bottle of wine would wait another hour.
P.S: The bottle of wine was worth waiting for too!
What a wonderful Mass to participate in .. I bet you are so pleased that you went.
Just think how much better the wine tasted when you eventually had a glass :-)
You didn't impress the high school people but you impressed Another who really cared.
Oh I loved that final picture....did you see it(?), that sun ray breaking through the window, right in between the corner of the cross???? That was awesome, that was for you, a little wink I think. Loved this!!!