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Take Up Your Cross
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We hear a dark message from Jesus today... He is not the
sweet Jesus, meek and mild. He is brutally honest and straight forward. I
am going to Jerusalem to suffer and die and if you come after me, you
must take up the cross. If you want to save your life then you must
first lose it. That is a tall order.
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This Jesus led a remarkable life. He spent three
decades of his life, about 30 of his 33 years where you and I would
never dream of looking for Him ‑ in a small town never mentioned in the
Old Testament. A town about which His native disciple Nathanial
asked ‑ "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"
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Of those three decades, we know little save that the
child got bigger and wiser and He was loved by God and the people of
Nazareth. He then got lost for three days and was found in the temple by
His parents. He gave no more than three years publicly to the people He
had been born to save and even then He descended on them not with
Angels' thunder or power. He began as we would never begin, He had John
baptize him. The Devil tempted Him from His mission with bread, pride
and with riches.
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He had friends among the well to do ‑ Lazarus and his
sisters and He loved them. He spent most of His time with those that the
self‑righteous despised, those they call sinners. He preached a twin
message everyone could understand. Love God above all else. Love your
sisters and brothers as much as you love yourself. He made enemies of
the powerful because He put compassion above tradition. Love above law.
People above things. He claimed a relationship with the Father so
intimate that the scandalized took up stones to cast at Him for
blasphemy. Because you being a man, make yourself God.
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Those three years were a journey as we read in our
Gospel today. A journey to Jerusalem because, you see, Jesus became
human not simply to say something but to tell us truths we could never
have suspected about God and about ourselves. He became human to do
something, every word He spoke, every breath He drew, every curse that
mocked Him and every stone that missed Him was a step on His way to
Jerusalem.
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It was there that the impossible would happen, the
unthinkable... our salvation from sin and self would be consummated in
crucifixion. Not our crucifixion, but God's. One dark day, we humans
that He had created took our God and nailed Him to a cross. This
tremendous lover did all of this for you and me as if we were the only
ones that ever existed. If we are to follow Christ, we too must be ready
to bear a cross. Whoever does not take up their cross daily is not
worthy of me.
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As we saw in today's Gospel, He turned savagely on Peter
when he rebelled against the cross. Remember, even Jesus had someone
help Him carry His cross and He will help us carry ours. What kind of
cross will you have to carry, that you carry now, I do not know. I do
know that the cross is not just for the elderly, it touches all of us.
It could be pain of body or spirit, disappointments or the death of a
loved one. It could be the insecurities of youth or the trembling of old
age.
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The cross hangs over all of our lives and with all my
years of theology, I still do not know why. What I do know, what I have
experienced is that there is no human pain that cannot be touched to the
cross of Christ. There is no death that does not bring life. The only
thing that can help us carry the crosses that are so much a part of life
is our relationship with God. Hopefully it is a loving relationship.
You will not love God because you have studied Him, you will love Him
because you have touched Him and He has touched you.
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The questions ‑ why suffering, why pain, why do bad
things happen to good people? Those questions will not wear away but you
will come to know that your Gethsemane is His garden; your Calvary is
also His cross. We all shudder a little when Christ warns us that life
can get tough and that we have to face up to it. None of us likes cross
carrying, we are somewhat like those disciples on the road to Emmaus.
Remember them? They were walking away from Jerusalem, away from the
suffering, away from the cross. The resurrected Christ joins them on the
road and they do not recognize Him and they tell Him of all their
disappointments and their frustrations. They tell Him that they are
leaving Jerusalem and going to Emmaus, away from the cross. We all like
to do that ‑ walk away from our own Jerusalem and away from suffering
and the cross, the danger is that when we do that we always miss the
resurrection.
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Yours in Christ,
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Fr. Robert Warren, S.A.
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Spiritual Director
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