Next Sunday is Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. The readings today serve as a premonition, a preview of the forthcoming events. Jesus tells his followers: "Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains but a single grain. But if it dies, it yields much fruit." Death is nature's pattern, it is life's pattern too. But new life in abundance, the rich harvest, not extinction, is the end result. "When I am lifted up from the earth I shall draw all to myself." By these words he indicated the kind of death he would die, John tells us. The cross casts its shadow over today's readings then. In fact Jesus had already told his followers that if they did not take up the cross they could not be followers of his. In fact this is a precondition for discipleship. If you want to be a follower of mine, you must do this, he tells us. The cross is central to our faith and to our lives. Many commentators down the ages identify this injunction as the fatal flaw at the heart of Christianity. It scars an otherwise uplifting and humanising creed. It introduces into Christianity a fatalism and an acceptance of suffering that is destructive of humanity. It produces a submissive people who too readily accepted tyranny and injustice, some will argue.
Whether we like it or not, whether we believe anything or not, the cross intrudes in some form or other into all our lives. If Christianity doesn't challenge us, it has lost the energetic flair of its founder. If it doesn't challenge us to reach out beyond our selfish shells, then it is not working for us. For example, if our comfortable lifestyle is not challenged by the plight of the poor, then we are not living out our Christianity in any meaningful sense. If our hearts are not moved to action by the sufferings of our brothers and sisters, then Christianity has lost its power to save us. This aspect of Christianity will never be popular in any age. But in an age of self-indulgence and self-promotion, it will meet with derision and outright hostility. And we will experience that challenge as a cross. But, contrary to popular belief, it is a civilising and humanising cross. Without that challenge, we would be a lesser people, a less human people. We are sensitised and humanised by the needs of others. Sensitivity to the needs of others alert us to our own needs and connect us to ourselves. However, if we consistently ignore the needs of others, we will be gradually dehumanised; if we respond to their needs, and experience the discomfort of putting the needs of others before our own, then we are conforming to the will of God for us; we are renouncing rugged individualism and we are taking up our cross daily.
The cross strives to confront us with our own experience of life. As human beings, our experiences of life can vary greatly. For example, there will be a massive difference between the way in which the people of Baghdad and the people of Galway experience life this morning. We can genuinely speak of two entirely different worlds: outwardly at least, one is a world of fear and foreboding, the other a world of filled with the sunny prospects of Summer. The overall disposition in our part unites us with our world and makes us rejoice in it - it promises love, of acceptance, of communion. However, the other experience, fear and foreboding, separates us from our world and makes us hate it -an experience of fear, of exile, of alienation and discord. But the fault-line which divides the world of foreboding fear from the world of optimistic love is not simply a geographic line: it runs through the heart of every human being. We are all profoundly satisfied by love and communion. We are exasperated and alienated by hatred and exile. The first convinces us that things are right with us. The second convinces us that things are wrong with us. It would seem as though we were born with an orientation towards love and communion; when this orientation towards communion is prevented and frustrated, then the quest for love turns to hatred and alienation. Goodness and communion are primary; evil and alienation secondary. Evil exists not in its own right but as a thwarted goodness.
This would seem to be borne out by our own experiences of life. For example, the terrorist is fired by a justice denied. The evils perpetrated by official armies are fired by a fear of anarchy. The same process is at work within each one of us. For example, nobody ever sets out to collapse a marriage. The forces of alienation and misunderstanding build up without our knowing it. When they lie there unaddressed, they flower into hatred. The symbol of the cross holds this reality before us our eyes. It is a reality for every human being, as much for the atheist and agnostic as for the Christian. The cross says to us: You too have experienced good and evil. But follow this path and life is yours.
But when Jesus tells us to take up our cross daily, he is not imposing a burden on us. He is merely inviting us to recognise reality, to acknowledge a truth that is central to human experience. That truth is as follows: loss, pain and suffering are almost constant companions. They are at least as present to us as laughter and song. The cross symbolises for us this reality. In symbolising it, we are enabled to come to terms with it. This is not a very popular message. No one likes to be reminded of loss or pain. But ignoring the reality won't banish it. We don't glide automatically towards Christian maturity. We struggle, suffer and fight for it. It is indeed a question of taking up our cross daily. These inevitable realities of life have been pushed to the margins; they have been sanitised in hospitals, in rest homes and in funeral parlours. The wake in the home has been replaced by a viewing at a funeral parlour. The wake is reduced to a cosmetic exercise, in more senses than one.
The cross keeps our minds fixed on the reality of life and of death. Jesus did not impose the cross upon us. He merely encouraged us through his example to face and embrace the cross that is at the heart of human experience. But this is not a fatal attraction. As Christians we believe that it is in facing up to reality, we are following the steps of Jesus Christ who triumphed over sin and death through embracing the Cross. But the Cross is merely another word for 'life in all its fullness'. Since he has struggled with us, we shall triumph with him. This is the process we attempt to savour and strengthen during the Holy Week and Easter celebrations. Easter week then is not just a hobby for the elite; it deals with the dark mystery at the heart of all humanity.
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