To be a human in this fallen world– to be a human person in this darkness, waiting here for the first light of dawn as the stars begin to fade– is to be on the Cross. You can’t get away from the Cross. You were born there, to a mother who was on the cross when she bore you, and you won’t be taken down until you give up the ghost. To be a human being is to be a creature who is both flesh and spirit, a body and a soul, both meat and ghost. Both are you. In the beginning, when all was well, these weren’t in conflict; now, in the fallen world, they are. To be human in the fallen world is to be suspended between Heaven and earth until it kills you. You don’t ascend but you never fully touch the ground, either, and that hurts.
To be a human in this fallen world is to be nailed to something, to be impaled and affixed to something. That’s how it works. Everybody knows this. Every myth speaks of this. Ghosts haunt the places they’re buried. Misers die clinging to their gold. Tyrants die grasping their crowns. Lovers follow one another to Heaven or Hell. Where your treasure is, there will your heart be, and your heart will be pierced through. All your outer trappings will be stripped away, taking the scabs that covered your scourges with them. The nail will go through your feet so you can never walk away again. The nail they put into your wrist will tear all the way up to your hand, and you’ll never be able to grasp anything else, nothing to pull you off of the cross you’ve been nailed to. That’s where every human will end up, eventually. Our only choice is, which cross.
On Calvary there are innumerable crosses. Some are made of gold. Some are made of power. Some are made of sex, some of anger, some of fear, some of fame. Some are deliberate ignorance and some are the quest for knowledge not tempered by wisdom. Some are made of believing yourself to be wise. Some are a patchwork of all of these. Christ died on a cross because He became human, and every human who ever lived will die on a cross. Christ’s feet and hand were nailed because mine are. Christ was pierced through because I am pierced through.
And, Christ died on a cross, to add a new cross to the crosses on Calvary. Now, besides the others, we have a choice to die on His Cross. And if we die on His, we live.
If we choose the Cross of Christ, we will find Christ dying there with us. If we volunteer to be crucified with Him, we will rise with Him. If we wait out the night on that Cross until all the stars are extinguished and there’s nothing but blackness in all the world, we will see the first rays of dawn, and more than dawn. We will see daylight. I can’t tell you what that’s like, not in this world of night. But we will see daylight at last.
Then you won’t need me to tell you all about it.
Set out to find the True Cross, as Saint Helen did. You’ll know it, as she did, because it’s the one that brings people back to life.
Why the Cross?
Because the Cross is all there’s ever been.
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