We, the women and men of the blood, stand at the foot of that cross where Jesus still bleeds; wars in our streets, wars in our neighbor's yards, wars around the world.

The many needs of reconciliation in our world urge us to carry the blood of the crucified Christ in cups filled at the foot of the Cross. Bonded in charity and bathed in the blood of Christ, we point to Jesus crouched and waiting in the corners of our excess.

The time has come to go again and again into the world needing God's reconciling love. Christ's blood in the chalices of our lives spills as a drink of justice for those excluded because of gender, because of social position, for those who love differently, and for those who live in ways which make us uncomfortable. There's both a poverty of goods and a poverty of belonging for those on the edge.

We are the action and activity of the blood. As we tend the cup, we pray, "Lord God, may this cup pass me by." It doesn't.

Drinking from the cup of our experience we know the absence of our love for one another, the hurts that we have stuffed into the pockets of our pain, the broken strings of promises unkept. We have harbored resentments for too long. But God assures us that we are up to the task of reconciliation.

To stand at the foot of the cross is to see God's blood spilled carelessly in the carnage of the world. Bloody wars of greed and all acts of violence deny God's existence and presence in the other. Victimization reveals itself as painful stories of God's absence in our world's violent way of being. Silent and sticky to the touch, wasted blood dries quickly to strain permanently the boundaries that separate people from people: prejudice, bigotry, sexism, homophobia, name-calling, discrimination.

From the foot of the Cross the silent screams of the voiceless become deafening. We can see into the camps from which today's victims of crucifixion are expelled in denial of equality, victims of death-dealing discrimination. We see too clearly the familiar and sanctioned violence of greed of those who have power. Violent cries of injustice are visible in the pleading eyes of hungry children. Child victims of war memorialize a national sin that we cannot, and should not, deny.

As prophets and missionaries of the blood, we wrap ourselves in a spirituality of reconciliation. This stains how we view ourselves and those with whom we are broken. We are women and men of reconciliation. We look into the living rooms of our lives to know our own sins of injustice. There is injustice when a fair wage is not paid. There is injustice when people are denied voice. There is injustice in violence of any name. The reconciling blood of the cup of the covenant spills to give voice, protesting oppression and victimization.

As our world decreases in size, we look beyond the borders of our nation to know God's inclusive call, especially with those with whom we do not agree. The cup filled at the foot of the cross spills as compassion and reminds us to seek virtue rather than orthodoxy.

Because the blood of God's Son is shed for everyone, the cup of the new covenant carries us to strangers. We are anxious to meet strangers to know them as friends. That is the work of reconciliation. The blood sends us as missionaries into the camps of those kept outside the gates of respectability. It is not enough to feed the poor. The blood of reconciliation asks us to know their names. More than praying for the sick and dying, we must hold their hands. We have too often denied problems ignoring them with our silence. God's blood sends us as prophets and missionaries to point to Jesus who is the way.

The crucified Jesus is the bridge to a new world, to a new creation, the gate between heaven and earth. As prophets and missionaries, we point to Jesus where reconciliation flows from the cross. We look outside ourselves, outside the gates, and across the bridge to Christ to a new world, a world colored with reconciliation. Having put our ears to the cracks in the walls of our social structures, we have heard God's voice in the cries and whimpers of the lonely, the victimized, the outcast, the oppressed. We will be healed only in the carrying of the cross of commitment of God's justice and hope.

We carry and offer the cup to remind the world of what it can be, what it must be to be the creation of God. We spill ourselves into a new world, a world intended by God to be a world of reconciliation.

When we gather at the foot of the cross to fill containers with the blood of Jesus, why would we imagine that we would go anywhere but where the self-righteous will say we ought not go?

Fr. Jack McClure, C.PP.S., "With Chalice in Hand, We Stand at the Foot of the Cross", The New Wine Press, March 25, 1995

FOR REFLECTION:

1. What do I find in myself as I "look into the living room of my life" that is in need of God's reconciling love?

2. How do I bring God's reconciling love to others in the corners of my daily life?