The Cross of Christ Contains all the Love of God

This weekend we celebrate the Exaltation of the Cross. "We preach Christ crucified." (1 Cor 1:23). This is Jesus, on the cross. We preach the crucifix. Jesus and the cross. Jesus is king and his throne is the cross.

Going back to Pope Francis' words after the Stations of the Cross during World Youth Day, he asked the youth of the world a very important question: "What has the Cross left in each one of us?" Answer: It leaves for us the certainty of God's love for us. "A love so great that it enters into our sin and forgives it, enters into our suffering and gives us the strength to bear it. It is a love that enters into death to conquer it and to save us." 

"The Cross of Christ contains all the love of God; there we find his immeasurable mercy. This is a love in which we can place all our trust, in which we can believe."

When I look at the cross, I am not scandalized as the ancients were. Even some Christian faiths are afraid of looking at Jesus on the cross. Or the believe that it is a form of idolatry to make an image of God. But the crucifix is not an idol; In the Old Testament, God was invisible and so it would have been very wrong to try to carve an image of God. But when the Son of Man entered our world to live and die, God became breathing, touchable, human. He had arms to embrace children, hands to bless and then to be nailed to the cross. A mouth to preach the Good news of forgiveness and healing, a head to be crowned with thorns. And these were all visible and better to draw and sculpt these so that we never forget that Jesus walked this earth and died on the cross. 

The cross is a very dreadful thing. But the good news for us is that Jesus always comes with the cross. And Mary, too, his faithful mother, who stood beside the cross. We are never alone in our crosses. I want to attempt to match Christ's love on the cross by giving myself to him. One of the most powerful lines of Pope Francis was when he called us all to give our lives to Jesus because "He never disappoints anyone!" "Only  in Christ crucified and risen can we find salvation and redemption. With him, evil suffering, and death do not have the last word, because he gives us hope and life: he has transformed the Cross from being an instrument of hate, defeat, and death to being a sign of love, victory, triumph, and life."

Do not be afraid of looking upon Christ Crucified. It is a pattern of our life and preaching. "We preach Christ Crucified." Keep his image close to you, and learn to give yourself as he does. I will be a missionary of Christ Crucified to the world so that others may know the love and forgiveness God has for us.

EXTRA: 

From Lumen Fidei 16, cited in this part of Pope Francis' talk:

16. The clearest proof of the reliability of Christ’s love is to be found in his dying for our sake. If laying down one’s life for one’s friends is the greatest proof of love (cf. Jn 15:13), Jesus offered his own life for all, even for his enemies, to transform their hearts. This explains why the evangelists could see the hour of Christ’s crucifixion as the culmination of the gaze of faith; in that hour the depth and breadth of God’s love shone forth. It was then that Saint John offered his solemn testimony, as together with the Mother of Jesus he gazed upon the pierced one (cf. Jn19:37): "He who saw this has borne witness, so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth" (Jn 19:35). In Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, Prince Myshkin sees a painting by Hans Holbein the Younger depicting Christ dead in the tomb and says: "Looking at that painting might cause one to lose his faith".[14] The painting is a gruesome portrayal of the destructive effects of death on Christ’s body. Yet it is precisely in contemplating Jesus’ death that faith grows stronger and receives a dazzling light; then it is revealed as faith in Christ’s steadfast love for us, a love capable of embracing death to bring us salvation. This love, which did not recoil before death in order to show its depth, is something I can believe in; Christ’s total self-gift overcomes every suspicion and enables me to entrust myself to him completely.