“How splendid the cross of Christ! It brings life, not death;
light, not darkness; Paradise, not its loss. It is the wood on which the Lord,
like a great warrior, was wounded in hands and feet and side, but healed
thereby our wounds. A tree has destroyed us; a tree now brought us life"
(Theodore of Studios).
When we remember the cross, the very first thing
comes to our mind is suffering. Suffering is necessarily associated with the
cross. Sometime we stop with the suffering. We forget about the glory and the
joy that the cross brings in our life. Life and death, joy and sorrow, failure
and victory, all these opposing realities could be considered as the two sides
of the same coin. One can’t experience joy without sorrow, life without death
and victory without failure. Therefore cross is an essential part Christian
life because without the cross Jesus is not Christ and without the Cross of
Christ, Christianity has no significance.
The cross was a kind of humiliation for the Jews,
but for Christians it was a symbol of victory. As St. Paul says in the letter
to the Corinthians, “but we
preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles
(1Cor 1, 23). God does not think the way the humans think. God’s ways are
different. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God
chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong (1Cor 1, 27). Cross also symbolizes that out of
unconditional love for the humanity, God chooses to suffer for the salvation of
humankind. God chooses to suffer with his people. Therefore Jesus in his entire
life time, he is in solidarity with the poor, tax collectors and sinners. He
identifies with the sinners at the river Jordan before receiving the Baptism. Therefore
cross becomes the most powerful manifestation of God’s redeeming love.
Pope Francis says,
““The one tree has wrought so much
evil, the other tree has brought us to salvation, to health. This tree of the
Cross save us, all of us, from the consequences of that other tree, where
self-sufficiency, arrogance, the pride of us wanting to know all things
according to our own mentality, according to our own criteria, and also
according to that presumption of being and becoming the only judges of the
world.” Therefore the cross reminds us of our human limitations and calls to
trust in the infinite love of God.
When we lose meaning in our life, when the difficulties shatter our
dreams, when the failures become hurdle on the way to success, what do we do? Where
do we go? Whom do we seek? Can we remember the Lord who bore all our
infirmities and gave us victory over sin? Let the sufferings, difficulties may
not lead us to lose hope in life, rather let us look at the cross and draw
inspiration so that we bear our suffering joyfully as we look at the crucified
Lord on the cross.