What do we think about Holy Cross?

It’s a sign of our salvation.

We are thankful to God for the Cross of his Son.

We praise God that his Son died on the cross for us.

The cross is very important in our faith: It is sign of hope and victory…assurance that our life doesn’t end on Good Friday. While it is a sign of suffering and pain, the very last word on it is the Sunday morning of His resurrection and new life.

Let us think for few moments about our personal crosses: Our weaknesses, struggles, daily problems and burdens. And what of the people who are for us are a kind of cross to bear?

And what is our approach? We would love to get rid of our crosses.

Our weaknesses, our problems, our health issues, our work issues, anything we don’t know how to deal with effectively.

We would like to be somebody different, a better person, more perfect in the world’s eyes.

We just don’t like our crosses!

Let us see the radically different approaches we have towards cross of Jesus and that of my own crosses.

It may sound stupid and crazy, but as much as we are thankful to God for the cross of his Son, we equally need to be thankful for our own crosses.

Being thankful for my own crosses changed my life.

When I look to my past I see that God brought something good out of every place which was filled with darkness and pain, and I am thankful for that.

So why not to go one step further and be thankful immediately when something difficult happens… when I face my weakness?

It doesn’t mean I have to be passive.

It means that I let God be God in my life, in my whole life, the good and the bad.

That I acknowledge that he is the Lord of my entire life, and whatever happens…He is with me.

I would like for you to spend some time on prayer and try talking to God about your crosses and just thank him for those. It won’t be easy, and it may take some time.

 

It sounds crazy, it sounds illogical… and from a purely logical viewpoint, it is!

But logic of the cross is itself, illogical.

And God invites us to enter into this logic of trust and surrender.

Again, it changed my life and I pray it will change your lives too!

And it will help us to grow in our faith journey.

 

Jesus’ cross:

What was at the time a disaster, the end of the world for his disciples, a sign of rejection, abandonment, of being a complete looser…is the way of salvation.

We celebrate the Eucharist as a fruit of Jesus’ death on the cross.

That is the very same with my own life.

What can be seen as a disaster, of complete darkness, of total rejection, is simply a way towards salvation.

Jesus died for us on the cross and was risen from the dead to bring us this perspective:

There is no life without our cross and our suffering.

Why do I ask you to do such an insane thing…to praise God in your suffering, in your pain, in your crisis? Because I see how powerfully it aligns my life with the life of Christ.

When we are in pain, darkness, despair, we don’t see where it leads us, just as Jesus’ disciples didn’t see it. Even when their master was dying on the cross, they did not see it.  But Jesus knew it!

This is why he embraced it.

And that is why we must embrace it.