Musings
The Sign of
I
THE CROSS
t was an old cross that hung for years over my grandmother’s bed. We said our nightly prayers on our knees and never forgot how Jesus died for us. After my grandmother passed the cross hung over my mother’s bed. The suffering Jesus hung from the cross looking up to God his father as if to say “I will die for their sins”. He was made of brass and the cross of dark wood. Years later my mother would pass and I carried the cross into my house. Late one night as I was finishing up a play I was writing called The Rugged Cross, I heard a noise in the bedroom as if something had fallen. I got up and looked around the bedroom. Everything seemed to be okay, but as I left the bedroom I looked on the floor. Jesus had fallen from the cross. The very nails that had held him to the cross had somehow given way from the weight of the brass or perhaps the wood on the cross had dried out. Whatever the reason, I took it as a sign. It was not clear to me what that sign was but someone was telling me something. I took the wooden cross down off the wall. I rummaged through the carpet and found the nails. Jesus, the cross and the nails sat there for days. I don’t know what it was in me but I couldn’t nail Him back up. My imagination took hold of me. It would surely be a desecration. Perhaps I would be the one Jesus would never forgive. So, I put Jesus in a little tote somewhere in the shed where He lay
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26 | THE IRISH SCENE
BY NOEL O’NEILL
for years. I used the cross itself in a few plays I had written and later hung it back over my bed. I always meant to put Jesus back onto the cross but somehow something always interrupted me, perhaps it was Jesus. One day as I cleaned out the shed I opened the tote and there He lay, arms outstretched with the same sorrowful expression on his face. I even spoke to Him and said how sorry I was and how grateful I was that He had forgiven me. It was then I realised what the sign was. It was as if Jesus had taken me into His sacred heart to show me that I should never have separated Him from the cross. How He belongs there to remind us how He had suffered and died for us, forgave us our sins and importantly, how we must forgive each other. I took him from the tote and removed the cross from the wall. I didn’t nail Him to the cross, I glued Him…it seemed to be the most compassionate thing to do and I felt in my heart that all was forgiven.
