By Sr. Nun Other

Six Times Five Years At Lauds on Sunday, we celebrated The Feast of the Holy Cross. The bright, summer-remnant September day seemed out of sync with the singing of Good Friday’s traditional Latin Hymn. Perhaps the unfamiliar setting freed the words for new interpretation. I shed my usual somber Lenten reflections, newly fascinated by these translations:

Verse 1: Six times five years now completed, the time of the body fulfilled, choosing himself to be born for this, given over to the passion, the lamb on the cross is lifted, crucified on the tree. And from Verse 5, You alone were worthy to carry the ransom of all time, and, as a captain, to prepare a port for the shipwrecked world.

Think of it!  Jesus was just thirty years old — at least according to the hymn writer — when he shouldered the burden of a world gone wrong. His worthiness outshone my unworthiness, his courage outweighs my fear. The cross, no longer an instrument of death, glows as a symbol of unbridled life.