The Cross of Christ
On the second part of our journey Our Lady of Medjugorje takes us to the Mountain of the Cross. She asks us to “pray a great deal for peace in front of the Cross”. The Cross of Christ is so important for Mary and the Church. Without understanding the power of the Cross we will never understand the Sacraments or about salvation.
Jesus greatest act of love was the Cross. A call to forgiveness is a call to the Cross. A question I need to ask myself is “Am I ashamed of the Cross”? Both the Jews and the Greeks agreed that the idea of a crucified Savior was a scandal and a folly, lCorinthiansl:18-25. It was 400 years before Christians used the Cross as a symbol. A further 200 years before a figure was put on the Cross. People preferred to speak merely of the death of Jesus without saying how it happened. lCorinthians 15:3-5 is typical ‘Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and was buried.’ We need to be very careful not to rob the Cross of Jesus or its power lCorinthians 1:17, by trying to convert the Cross into human sentimental language. The Cross a sign of shame becoming a sign of victory.
MARY AND THE CROSS
Mary’s final journey with Jesus, the way of the cross, was one of
great pain, suffering and sadness. Mary is never far away from Jesus,
offering him support with her presence. The Cross, the place of suffering
and injustice, we find Mary standing in obedience to God’s calling.
Even today, Mary is never very far from those of her children that are
suffering, from pain, injustice and loneliness. For the disciple John,
the Mother of Jesus is a person who believes and calls others to obey
the word. She knows the needs of all the people of God and presents them
to her Son, yet she also knows it is obedience to the Word that sets the
changes in motion.
Mary accompanies Jesus on his journey and ministry and is with him from the beginning of his public work to his death, and the beginning of the Church. Jesus recognized her special presence from the Cross. At the cross she becomes Mother of all Christ’s disciples and they learn from her, just as Jesus did and so do we today. We learn from her the meaning of poverty, humility, obedience, reverence and mercy. The presence of Mary at the Cross is a reminder to us that Christ was not completely abandoned at his death, there was one willing to pay the price with him, to stand beside him in his agony. It is this solidarity with Christ that makes Mary our Mother and our model.
Her presence at the cross reminds us, that we too must identify and struggle with those who are broken and outcast. The shadow of the cross is long. The old are abused. Women and children are beaten and abused. There is violence in the streets. There is insecurity, lost jobs, drugs and alcohol. The shadow of the cross is in the abortions, in tribal clashes, racism, ethnic cleansing. All these victims are entrusted to Mary, the Mother. She stands with them, silently sharing and bearing their suffering as her own. If we want the consolation of our Mother, and if we want to console her in her sorrows, then we must comfort all her children. With Mary we must forgive and bury our rage, and bitterness at friends, family, relatives, and neighbors. In our pain we look for Jesus, and find Mary. No one needs to suffer alone.
WERE YOU THERE
‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord”, is a song we
used to sing in the seminary, while we walked the way of the cross. On
a Good Friday, as we sit in Church having listened to God’s word,
we feel safe and undisturbed. It is easy for us, not to be concerned or
responsible for Jesus crucifixion and death. It happened so long ago and
anyway it was not our fault. I suppose the early Christians felt the same
way? Yet on the day of Pentecost, Peter stood up with the other apostles
and spoke to the people. In Acts 2:23ff Peter said, “You crucified
Jesus of Nazareth; God raised Him up! Repent”
I pray that these words will pierce our hearts today, as they pierced the hearts of those who were listening to the apostle. The three thousand to whom Peter addressed these words were certainly not all present on Calvary, hammering in the nails. How then did they kill Jesus? They killed him because they had not listened to the news Jesus brought them that “the kingdom of God has come, convert and believe the Gospel”.
Maybe while Jesus walked the streets preaching his message of love and repentance, they bowed their heads, closed the doors to their homes and hearts, and continued to live in darkness, in case the light of Jesus’ teaching would reveal the real truth of their lives. Throughout the years, we Christians have placed the blame for the death of Jesus on the religious power of the time, that is, on the Jews. Others blame it on the political power that is on the Romans, others blame it on both.
Today we continue to blame others, perhaps we are like King David, 2Samuell2:1-8 who on hearing the prophet Nathan’s account of the great sin committed in the town, finally exploded in anger “ The man who did that deserves to die.” Now what was the prophet Nathan answer to David that day? In Verse 7 Nathan pointing at David, said “you are that man.”
God cries out the same words to us today as we try to discover who killed Jesus: ‘You are that man! you killed Jesus of Nazareth!’ you were there that day: you shouted with the crowd “take him away and crucify him” You were there with Peter when he denied him, with Judas when he betrayed him, you were there with the soldiers when they scourged him, you added your thorns to his crown of thorns, you spat on his face!”. How can God say that when we are living in the 21 Century?
In Romans 4: 25 it says “that Jesus was put to death for our sins”, this statement is at the very heart of our faith. The prophet in Isaiah 53:4-5 says ‘yet ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried We are all accused of his death for we have all sinned and it would be a lie to deny this. But it is not the same thing to say, “Jesus died for our sins”, that’s easy to say but to say “we killed Jesus” now that’s different.
In Hebrews 6:6 it says of those who sin after baptism (that is to say - us), that they “have wilfully crucified the Son of God and openly mocked him”. On hearing the terrible accusation, “you killed Jesus of Nazareth” the three thousand were cut to the heart and asked Peter “what must we do?” A great fear descended upon them; what about you today? If we are not made of stone, then we should experience fear too. Imagine God so loved the world as to give his only Son, and we, each of us here who have received baptism, have answered, “Kill him! we have killed him” May the good Lord continue to have mercy on us.
Jesus says to us, what he said to the holy women of Jerusalem “Do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and your sins.” Luke 23:23
in Peter’s sermon, there is another wonderful verse “But God raised him up”. By resurrecting Jesus from the dead God transformed our greatest sin into his greatest mercy. Only if the word repentance’ has reached the bottom of our stubborn hearts shall we be able to experience the floods of light, love, mercy and forgiveness which come with the Easter resurrection. From his Cross, Jesus prayed for us, with all his energy “Father forgive them?” These three words, “Father forgive them?” is our saving grace today. The Father who heard his Son’s prayer in life, cannot but have heard his Son’s final prayer in death
ON THE CROSS JESUS GIVES UP HIS SPIRIT
In his letter to the Romans St. Paul writes “The love of God has
been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which has been given to
us.” Romans 5:5 Jesus did everything “in the Holy Spirit”.
All his preaching was done “in the Holy Spirit” and Jesus’
final act on earth was, on the Cross when “Jesus again crying out
in a loud voice, and gave up his Spirit”. (Matthew 27:50 & Mark
15:37)
In lCorinthians 2:13 it says “We have received that Spirit that comes from God, to teach us to understand the gifts that he has given us”, This gift of love, Christ gave us “when we were still helpless, when at His appointed moment Christ died for sinful men” Romans 5:6.
The cry of Jesus on the Cross was a cry of pain, and love at the same time. “He had always loved those who were His in the world, but now He showed how perfect His love was”. John 13:1 He loved them with His last breath! Jesus knew well that there is only one key that opens closed hearts, and it is not reproach, or judgment, or threats, or fear, or shame. None of these! It is only LOVE.
A CALL TO EMBRACE THE CROSS
A call to forgiveness is a call to the Cross. It is the Cross of Jesus
that brings salvation, healing and forgiveness. Healing flows on the river
of forgiveness, especially in the area of self love. We need to love ourselves
as God loves us.
It is the cross of Jesus, which protects your soul, so that your sins don’t cause you to suffer pain and death. If the word of God only uncovered our soul, and let us experience the sacredness and the raw tenderness of the soul we would continually cringe in pain from the effects of our sin, our guilt and our shame, despairing of all hope we would cry out “If you, 0 Lord should mark our guilt, Lord who would survive” Psalm 130:3 Jesus today still takes the punishment for our sins that is why we don’t feel the pain. Jesus is present at every sinful act, he knows what we have done, the hurt, the pain and the suffering we have caused. It is Jesus’ blood flowing from the Cross, through the Sacrament of Confession that washes away our sins and heals our souls. That’s why ifs so important to come to Confession with an open heart, and with serious sorrow.
Honesty in naming and confessing our sins opens a door for God’s grace to enter an area of our lives that we had previously closed. His grace is vital to the complete change of direction that repentance calls for. Honest confession breaks our pattern of blindness and dispels the darkness in which evil spirits dwell.
We need to embrace the Cross like St Francis embraced the person suffering from leprosy. Francis met the leper — even the sight of one from a distance disturbed him. He offered the leper alms from a distance because the sight of them and the smell of rotting flesh — horrified him. Francis thought that by exchanging his clothes with the poor and putting on theirs that that would make him experience what it was like to be poor. This didn’t happen so he realized that the only solution was to follow the way shown by the self-sacrificing Christ.
Francis in embracing and kissing the leper, overcame his own desires, He made a choice between himself and God — between saving his life and losing it. Francis experience of the lepers nauseated him beyond measure; but God lead him into their company — what had previously nauseated him, became a source of spiritual and physical consolation for him. Francis realized that he must keep his eyes constantly fixed on Christ on the Cross or else he would lose the grace to be able to continue embracing those suffering from leprosy and so return to his former life. We need to keep the same idea so that we do not continue to revert to our lives of sin.
In similar incident in Matthew 14:22-33 Peter had to learn about keeping his eyes on the face of Christ. By doing so Peter found the strong hand of the Lord that saved him just like Francis. We need to have a similar experience with the Cross.
CONCLUSION
There is one final lesson for us to learn from the Cross, that there is
a powerful difference between CONCERN and COMPASSION. Concern speaks from
a distance while compassion comes from the heart, it gets involved. Compassion
for Jesus was more important, for it meant that He stood along side a
person in need, He felt their feelings, He hungered in their hungering.
Compassion is at work in the midst of pain. We are called to the foot
of the Cross and Jesus is calling us to a total sacrifice, a total self
giving. Fix your eyes on the Cross forget the materialism around you that
the world wants to offer.
St Francis offers us the following prayer:
All highest, glorious God, cast your light into the darkness of my heart.
Give me true faith, firm hope, perfect charity and profound humility together
with wisdom and perception so that I may do what is truly your holy will.
Amen”.
Let us in silence, look at the Cross and see what we are responsible for and then ask ourselves - what must we do now?
READINGS Hebrews 6:6, Mark 9:31, Mark 10:32-34