EXALTING THE CROSS OF CHRIST

EXALTING THE CROSS OF CHRIST

          Thanks to my own personal situation and how it has affected the parish in these last months (resolved only very recently, as you all know), we really didn’t have time to plan and prepare a proper celebration for our parish feast this weekend.  The hymns we sing will be (this time!) the best we can do.

          But we can never forget the price of our salvation (re-read I Corinthians 6:20 slowly).  Others remember in different ways:  Franz Liszt wrote a lovely piece for choir, soloists, and organ, on the Stations of the Cross; Franz Joseph Haydn wrote an orchestral meditation on the “Seven Last Words”; others focused on the central portion of the Credo about Crucifixion/Resurrection (JS Bach’s B-minor Mass; Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis; Vaughn Williams’ Mass in G-minor…).  Today, let me concentrate, like Haydn, on the 7 Last Words of our Lord on the Cross.  Without them, I do not think we can properly appreciate the Cross itself.

          “Why have you forsaken me?” “Father, forgive…” “This day you will be with me…”

        “Behold your Son; behold your mother.”  “I thirst.”       “It is finished.”  “Father, into your hands…”  

          Scripture and our Liturgy assure us that Jesus was “tempted/tested like us in all ways, but without sin.”  The quote from Psalm 22 (Jesus’ word both in Mark 15:34 and Matthew 27:46) shows the depth of the testing, of His engagement into the spiritual darkness and desolation that many of us experience (most notably, in recent decades, that of Mother Teresa of Kolkata).  It is the experience of that "dark night of the soul” described by the 16^th century Carmelite mystic, St John of the Cross.   Many of us have been there; Jesus was there before us.  He understands.  And He understands our needs, sufferings, pains—He thirsts along with us (John 19:28).   His is the cry of one who needs much and is given little, if anything…

          The words from Luke (23:34, 43) are the exemplification of mercy:  they reveal the reality of forgiveness in the most agonizing and terrifying of circumstances.   How can we pray for those who torture and persecute us?  Yet Jesus commanded that (Matthew 5:44), and He showed us that this was a serious challenge for us.  The result can be the deliverance of mercy to others, even one on a cross next to the Lord, one in the 11^th hour and 59^th minute of his life.   He is the ONLY ONE PERSON for whom we have Scriptural evidence that he is in the joys of heaven!

          Jesus’ words in John 19:26 show concern and compassion for others even in the face of torment, as though Jesus were saying, “John; Mom; take care of one another.  I love you.”

          The final words (Luke 23:46; John 19:30) are words of trusting surrender, confident that He achieved what He came to do (John 12:27).   And in spite of the darkness of “Why have you abandoned me?” we have the confidence to fall into the darkness, into the abyss, in full confident belief that at the bottom of that abyss, hidden, is the loving Father.  This is the ultimate act of faith, as the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner described it.   And this act of faith is validated for us by the reality of the Resurrection.

          This is the Cross of Christ; this is the price of our salvation.