Approaching Good Friday, I recall many evolving encounters with the central symbol of my faith: the Cross.
As a second grader, reciting the Prayer Before a Crucifix, which, next to a golden cross opened my Sunday Missal, I would utter these words:
Look down upon me,
Good and gentle Jesus …
When I look at You, oh Jesus,
And see Your five wounds,
I am very sad.
I was born beneath crucifixes at Loretto Hospital. I was baptized in front of Jesus on the Cross at St. Barbara’s in Brookfield. And I received First Communion at St. Mary of Celle, in Berwyn, beneath the hanging Jesus in the church on 15th Street.
My relationship with the Cross in boyhood carried a blend of awe, guilt, sorrow for my sins, and gratitude that Jesus had suffered and died for us. But I was not quite sure what it all meant.
The times changed as I grew with the faith. Vatican II opened the year after I received my first host. Dad was a good conservative man, respectful but also skeptical of the ideas that came from it. Over the years in grade school and high school, I could see the Council changing how we worshipped and how we understood our roles.
My understanding of the Cross evolved. By the time I was worshiping in college at a Newman Center, it had become less a reminder of my guilt and more a challenge to devote myself to a mission that would better the world. I chose to do so through community development.
I found inspiration in the writings of the Jesuit, Teilhard de Chardin. I embraced the idea that Christ’s death and resurrection signaled that each of us somehow could contribute to “Christogenesis,” Teilhard’s term for the loving evolution of our world.
In my late 30s, I became a father. Our twins were born sick, premature, one of them 3.5 pounds, red with infection, and seemingly near death. The tiny boy, connected to wires and tubes in the intensive care unit, struggled. Maureen and I agonized with him. After a surgery that removed some of his intestine, he began to heal and grow.
I was so jarred by the joys and challenges of fatherhood that I felt called to focus my work in community development on the central role that the family plays in it. It was like our little boy had been born on the Cross. I took up family-based community development as the renewed focus of my policy work, and my life.
In that work, I encountered many people in distress, but nobly striving to make their lives better. To capture the suffering that comes with development, I penned a poem, “The Wine of the Cross,” that reflected on Jesus’ ordeal.
It began as follows:
Taste the wine that drips and drips
From Christ’s sweet tears and angels’ lips.
Blood-red it rests on thorned tips.
Taste the wine that drips and drips.
A later stanza continued the liquid imagery:
Whose scream was that which soaked the night?
So bloody fierce, a drenched plight!
What father was bequeathed this fight?
Whose scream was that which soaked the night?
Now retired, over 30 years after our newborns writhed in the NICU, I can enjoy a glass of wine with them and their siblings. They are smart, strong men, approaching their 36th birthdays. The guy who, as an infant, lost some of his intestine now trains as an MMA-style fighter. As a grandpa (I’m known as “Beepa”) I take care of his brother’s little girl every Friday.
My relationship with the Cross continues to evolve. A couple of years ago, Maureen gave me the one that I wear today. It was found in Ukraine on the grounds of an old church. A year or so after I started wearing it, Russia invaded.
When I gaze on the Orthodox Cross that now hangs around my neck, I reflect on the heroism and suffering of the Ukrainian people. In fighting Russian tyranny, they’re protecting their democracy, as well as their families and children. In doing so, they’re defending us as well.
Perversely, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church supports Putin in his invasion. Sometimes, ironically, the Cross can end up dangling from the chests of oppressors. Let’s hope our country recommits to the right side of this fight.
I have grown over the years with the Cross. Today, my relationship with it blends a second-grader’s awe with an inspired college guy’s hope and a terrified dad’s resolve. It nails me with the reality that I could have done better. It makes me thankful for the victories, through sacrifice, that it continues to inspire.
Rich Kordesh grew up Catholic in Berwyn and raised his family in Oak Park.