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February 5, 2023: The Cross of Jesus leads to Everlasting Life
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“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” The words of St. Paul proclaimed in today’s 2nd reading to the Corinthians.
To know Jesus in our lives is to reflect and ponder his crucifixion. Personally, I could do a much better job at taking a moment or two to look directly at the many crosses encountered throughout a given day, and “stop to smell the roses of his cross,” a heavenly scent St. Paul breathed in every day after his conversion. Some may disagree that the symbol of the cross smells like a rose. That the cross is anything but pretty looking or heavenly-scented. A good argument could be made for such a statement. A worldly argument, though. But for Paul, the cross that is unattachable from the life story of Jesus Christ was a sweet-smelling rose. A rose that was the means of taking down for good the greatest enemy we all have, death.
How does Paul’s theology of the Cross of Christ affect the lives we live in the 21st century? Is the Cross of Jesus part of our Christian spirituality? Or even the central part that it was for Paul’s life? If the Cross of Jesus was removed from the preaching, teaching, and living of St. Paul’s life, he would have been worse off than a lost child in a crowded shopping mall. One would logically think that being rid of any cross in our lives, or in St. Paul’s life, that life would somehow become more meaningful and certainly much easier. After all, do we not all search to live on Easy Street as much as we can in this world?
A couple of weeks ago I was blessed to sneak away for one set of weekdays for a retreat in Pennsylvania, with the weather cooperating for travel purposes, spending a set of days in some quiet solitude with good religious books, my Rosary, daily Mass at a local Basilica where I was a congregant and not the presider, enjoying a slower than normal time from the daily routine of St. Anne’s Parish. It wasn’t quite Easy Street that week, but it was definitely the other street called Much Easier Than Normal Street. At the end of the week, however, the experience at the end of a retreat is one of coming back down the mountain, facing again the “real world” with all it throws at us, having been recharged to face whatever God has waiting for us, where the Lord is calling us to cooperate in the spiritual needs of his flock. Crosses tend to be absent, or more accurately, placed aside, during a religious retreat, while knowing they await as soon as we arrive back home.
I suspect that St. Paul, who tended to spend his “retreats” in prison for preaching the name of Jesus as Lord and Savior, (“Excuse me sir, you’re under arrest.” “What’s the charge against me?” “Preaching Jesus as Lord rather than Caesar.” “Wonderful! This is my third retreat this year!”) I suspect that St. Paul did not lose sight of what his respective prison sentences meant for him in religious terms. Rather than placing space between himself and the life of Christ, he understood each prison sentence as cooperation and participation in Jesus’ cross. At least on my retreat to Pennsylvania, any crosses that needed to be addressed had to wait until I returned home to the good people of God. But in another sense, whatever crosses I have in my life, which I won’t name at this time, for we all have them, such said crosses, like those of St. Paul, come with me wherever my feet go. The same applies to you 4 or 5 readers of this article and the crosses you carry.
I believe St. Paul is on to something quite profound here, in the non-separation of knowing Christ Jesus and the heavy Cross he carried to Golgotha. The Cross, we know, was lots more than a block of wood to hang some guy on for trumped-up charges of blasphemy and whatever else they could concoct. The Cross of our Lord for Christians is a heck of a lot more than a piece of wood used for death purposes. If we profess to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior, then knowing him must be connected to the central defining part of his life, his crucifixion. How does this play out for us, besides knowing that we too walk the path toward our own Golgotha? Our own hill outside the city gates?
The day our Lord was crucified, everyone who witnessed his death on a Friday afternoon, except for one person for sure (his mother), maybe two people, understood his death to be final. The close of his story. A failed Messiah who could not beat his adversaries. Jesus’ death on a Friday afternoon was the equivalent of the Red Sox all those years forgetting how to win a World Series. How to win the big prize. Jesus was cursed, both literally and figuratively, as were the Red Sox. I’ve heard the voices and shouts of many of their fans over the years when the Home Town Team knew only how to stumble year in and year out. Jesus was somehow worse than the Curse of the Bambino. He was cursed by those who stood below him, taunting him to no end, “Come down off the cross and we’ll believe you’re the Son of God.” Yeah, right! And, he was cursed in his apparent defeat at the hands of evil men. Who of us enjoys losing to evil men, women, or any spell and smell of evil that seeks to penetrate our lives? The answer? No one who is a God-fearing person.
What the cursers and most everyone in the crowd didn’t know, but God knew, was the Cross Jesus carried and eventually nailed to, was simply a means to an end. Not the same end his accusers had brewing and boiling in their rotten hearts. The end they had planned for him was, well, the end. “He won’t be heard from anymore, folks. He won’t be showing up to Fenway Park for any future games or any season that will break the curse of years upon years of the losing ways you’ve become accustomed to. His death is final. We beat him, and his Apostles and followers too. You can all go home now, back to the life you knew before this Jesus guy showed up, teaching this and that about the Kingdom of God. Return to your former way of life, for the ‘King’ is dead. And don’t waste your time doing anything he taught you. Listen to us instead. We’re the real powers around here.” Such were the thoughts concerning the man who carried his Cross and the ones he disappointed over a few years’ time.
Anyone who continues to think the same thoughts they did on a Friday afternoon when Jesus was crucified, such folks are leaving behind a Cross in their lives that is the only symbol to save our souls for eternal life. It’s no wonder why St. Paul could speak and write with full assurance, “Life is Christ, death is gain.” Our Lord’s death on a Friday afternoon, we know in the deep recesses of our hearts, was not what his persecutors said it was. In fact, after reports of Jesus appearing to people in different parts of the area where he performed his ministry, these same leaders who pronounced him finished were forced to concoct a story that his followers stole his body, carrying it off to make it look like he was raised from the dead. This is how losers think. They move from one false story to another when they know in their rotten hearts they lost the game. In their obstinance and fear, they cannot publicly admit the truth. What a pity, and what a perfect opportunity for conversion to the Truth. Only God knows what they eventually chose back then.
St. Paul and the non-separation of the Cross of Jesus in his life allows us disciples of Christ the opportunity to make the same spiritually healthy connection in our own journey of faith. Again, the Cross of Jesus and all its meaning was not always a part of my religious life on this personal journey of faith. The priesthood has changed this, especially with what happens at the altar at every Mass, in the re-presentation of our Lord’s sacrifice on Calvary. But the cross of Jesus, and how this reality of Christ touches us in more physical and practical ways, connects to the heartaches, the suffering, the shortfalls, the losses, the broken relationships, and any part of life that challenges our faith in Him.
St. Paul does not separate the Cross of Jesus from his life because he knows it leads to everlasting life. He preaches and teaches to his communities the great truth of how the curse has been broken. And how wrong a certain set of accusers were on a Friday afternoon as they yelled up at the man whose blood was dripping on them in their anger. If only they could have been literally touched by his blood that day! They would have been washed clean! On the other hand, we’re blessed to partake of his Precious Blood at every Mass in the reception of the Eucharist.
As with St. Paul, the cross of Jesus is the central symbol and reality in our Christian faith. It’s a part of Jesus’s life many would like to do without. But if we made such a choice, how could we come to the joy that follows? Such complete joy cannot be reached or given if we detach the meaning of our Lord’s Cross from the heart of our own lives. In a sense, Jesus’ Cross is our cross. But through it, we win the victory he won for the world on a Friday afternoon.