Sunday after the Exaltation of the Cross
Gal 2,16-20
Mk 8,34-38;9,1
What does Jesus mean, Take up your cross?
A few verses earlier in Mark’s Gospel, He had told His close disciples, His inner circle, that he must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and rise after three days. But here, He’s speaking to the crowd, not just his disciples.
Denying themselves? They could understand that. There was an ascetic tradition among the Essenes, one of the groups of Jews at that time. But pick up their cross? The cross was a Roman tool of torture and execution, and picking it up would have come across to them as an invitation to be tortured and executed.
Indeed, there were some who, in the ensuing decades, were tortured and executed. Throughout history, that has occurred again and again. And, it happens in some places even today.
But, at least at the moment, that’s not required of us in our society. Yet, to use our Lord’s words, we do live in a faithless and sinful generation. Violence, government corruption, all manner of sexual sin. We have to be prepared to suffer.
What is the value of suffering?
There are 3 ways
1. It contributes to our salvation
St Peter of Damascus writes: “By way of trials and sufferings we must purify the divine image in us in accordance with which we possess intelligence and are able to receive understanding and the likeness to God”.
“By way of trials and sufferings we must purify the divine image”.
Not only do sufferings purify the divine image in us, we begin to see what’s important in this life. We learn to let go of the unimportant things. Suffering helps us lose our attachments to things of the world. Sometimes one sees in the elderly the desire for release from this life; why? Certainly, they can just be tired, but also they may have lost their attachment to many of things of this world. Suffering willingly accepted can bring about that same detachment - a detachment which leaves us room in our souls, our lives, to develop holiness.
2. It can directly help others
The most perfect example of this truth is our Lord himself.
Of course, the sufferings He endured on the Cross bought our salvation. And Isaiah wrote in his Suffering Servant passage, “By his stripes we are healed”.
There are examples of suffering helping others drawn from daily life, too.
Think of the mother who forgoes a meal so that her children can eat.
Think of someone with an elderly parent, a parent who’s difficult at times. Yet that son or daughter takes care of that parent, enduring abuse. As much as love can underlie that care, there can still be suffering.
Or again, the parent with a gravely ill child. This loving parent often, despite the suffering in seeing their child suffer, will put on a brave face; the parent will show love and compassion - and strength - and this strength borne of suffering will give hope to the sick child.
3. It completes Christ’s afflictions
We hear the phrase “Offer it up”. How can offering up our suffering do any good?
St Paul wrote to the Colossians, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church”.
How does it add? How can anything be lacking in Christ’s afflictions?
Well, think of the sun. 93 million miles away, yet we still feel its heat. If you put a piece of paper on a sidewalk in the sunlight, nothing really happens. But, if you use a magnifying glass, you can focus the heat from the sun and make that paper catch fire.
There is nothing lacking in the power of the sun, but that magnifying glass gives it a focus; it completes what is lacking.
There is nothing lacking in the power of Christ’s afflictions, but our sufferings, when offered as a sacrifice, give His afflictions focus; they complete what is lacking.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that Original Sin “is a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted: it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it, subject to ignorance, suffering and the dominion of death, and inclined to sin - an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence” In telling us to take up our cross, our Lord is telling to accept the suffering that is part of being being human and turn it into something good.
Turn your suffering into
- A tool for your own salvation
- A tool to directly help others
- A tool to complete Christ’s afflictions.
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