Why the Cross? A Meditation for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Why the Cross? A Meditation for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross September 14, 2016

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Why the Cross?

Oh, so many reasons. I couldn’t tell you them all. Ask me again on the other side of the Jordan, where it’s easier to see. I probably still won’t be able to tell you, but it’ll be clearer.

On this side, where we walk in darkness, I can point to the little streaks of dawn creeping up over the horizon,  but that won’t tell you the whole of what the sun is. As the stars grow dimmer, you’ll think we’ve been abandoned by light altogether, and call me a liar. Then, when the sun comes up, you’ll feel that I didn’t do it justice.  Talking about the Cross is like that but worse, because the Cross is bigger than the sun.

So, everything I say from now on is going to be faint and feeble, like pointing to the first rays of dawn, but bear with me.

I used to think the Cross was like a bed or a closet in an abusive home– God the Father was angry and we deserved it, God the Father wanted to kill us because we were worthless, but Jesus Christ stuffed as many people as could fit under the bed or into the closet and threw Himself in front of it to protect us. Father beat up Christ until His anger was spent, and then Christ let us out from under the bed and Father went back to the bar for another drink. That’s how I imagined the Cross worked, when I was little. That’s heresy. God the Father is Love, and God the Son is Love, the Holy Ghost is the Love of the Father and the Son, and we are the beloved the Father made as a precious gift for the Son, to be drawn forever into the Love of the Father and the Son. Any explanation of the Cross that involves a cruelty you wouldn’t inflict on the one you love most, is a heresy.

So, why the Cross? An omnipotent God could have saved us with a word, the same way He created the light you can just see coming over the horizon. An omnipotent God created light with a word, days before He created a sun to be the ordinary channel for conveying light to the created world. Why did He use an event on earth to be channel of salvation? He could have just willed salvation. Why did the event have to be so violent? Why the Cross?

For one thing, because we’re already on the Cross.

The Cross is what it means to be human.


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