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Take Up Your Cross! (This means loving God and neighbor)
Aaron, the cantor at Mass this morning, picked as the opening song Take Up Your Cross. I thought it was an appropriate song because it was Friday, a day that we all should remember Our Lord's offering of Himself on the cross on Good Friday (and, of course, our calling to do the same). What I didn't know was that the Gospel, Mark 8:34-9:1, was where we find Jesus telling us exactly that (good job Aaron!). Now, onto what this post is really about, Fr. Joe commented at the beginning of Mass that we must align our cross with Christ's. I had hear before that we must carry our cross, but the way that Fr. Joe noted that we must align our cross with the cross of Jesus, made me think about this in a much deeper way. I always thought of picking up one's cross as in accepting all of life's difficulties, losses, struggles, and fears, offering them up to Christ, and growing closer to Him (becoming more like Him) by carrying our cross. However, as Fr. Joe expounded in the homily (I'm paraphrasing) we must also carry more than just our personal crosses. Jesus carried His cross for others. He carried His cross out of love for humanity. The cross isn't just about enduring through suffering, it is also about love. Enduring through suffering can lead us to love of God, but ideally our crosses should also lead us to love of neighbor. The cross is hard because it doesn't mean just accepting those things that we can't control and offering them up, it also means seriously living out our faith (it involve denying oneself). As James told us this morning: "If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it? So also faith of itself if it does not have works, is dead." [James 2:14-17]
Huston Smith, in his book, Why Religion Matters, talked about the image of the cross and how we are connected both with God (vertical beam) and our neighbor (horizontal beam). I disagreed with many of his conclusions, but this, I think, is a helpful analogy. Our connection with God is all-important, thus, accepting crosses for love of God, to obey Jesus, and to model our lives after His is extremely important (which is why it is the longer beam), but, we must not forget that Jesus's cross wasn't just an offering to His Father, it was also an offering for us, and it was how Our Lord showed God's immense love for us. Using Smith's picture, we have to have the horizontal beam as well (even if it is shorter) in order to have the complete cross. This, I think, is what Pope Francis is trying to say to us. He isn't throwing out the vertical beam - our relationship with God involving morality, sacraments, etc. (the spiritual works of mercy) - but he is emphasizing that we don't forget the horizontal. Our faith, our relationship with God, must lead to works, especially those that James mentioned (the corporal works of mercy).
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| St. Maximilian Kolbe is a fantastic example of the extremes that Christ calls us to show love for others. |
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