Our Creator on the Cross

When our churches were closed, I learned to use the Stations of the Cross visibly displayed outside of my local church as a catalyst for prayer.

The First Station: Jesus is Sentenced to Death:

We are all “sentenced” to death. Most of us don’t like to think about it, but it’s there and we know that it’s there. After death comes judgment, the private or particular judgment which later will be made public.

I wonder is it death that most of us fear or judgment before Christ? By not thinking about death are we trying to avoid that awesome responsibility in reference to the salvation of our souls? Yes, we do have a lot to do with where we end up for eternity; our free will does matter, and our choices have consequences, sometimes permanent ones.

Those of us who have accepted and cooperated with God’s graces receive heaven (or temporary purgatory). Those of us who have rejected God’s graces during this life will spend eternity without God, in Hell. “By rejecting grace in this life, one already judges oneself, ….and can even condemn oneself for all eternity….”  (CCC 679).

When judgment comes our way, we can take credit for the results, whatever they may be. The result should not be a surprise; our conscience during this life will give us a fairly accurate idea of where we are headed:

For man has in his heart a law inscribed by God….His conscience is man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths….When he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking (CCC 1776-1777).

The words of Jesus also bear witness to the importance of our choices:

Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and those who enter it are many. How narrow the gate and constricted the road that leads to life. And those who find it are few (Matthew: 7:13-14).

The Second Station: Jesus Accepts His Cross:

Jesus accepts his cross and he asks us every day to do the same: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily.” (Luke 9:23, NAB). What does it mean to take up our cross and follow Jesus? The cross is obviously suffering; is Jesus telling us that we need to suffer in order to follow Him? I know that suffering comes our way from time to time whether or not we profess to follow Christ; it is part of our existence; it is our cross.

Notice that Jesus tells us two things: (a)Take up your cross and (b) follow Him. He’s not telling us to just carry our cross, but to carry our cross with Him; there is a significant difference. He is telling us to embrace our suffering, to accept it for what it is, and to bring that suffering to him so that he can use it.

What can Jesus do with our suffering? Through Christ, our sufferings can become meritorious because through the grace of God our suffering, like the suffering of Jesus, can be applied as reparation for sin, my sins, your sins, the sins of the holy and suffering souls in purgatory and for the conversion of poor sinners.  Our suffering joined to Christ’s suffering has value; it can bring people closer to Christ and help to repair the damage done by sin.

There are many ways to join our suffering to the sufferings of Christ on Calvary, but the most efficacious way is with Christ through the daily Mass. Bring your pain, your worry, your every concern with you to the Sunday or mid-week Mass and offer it all to Jesus as your sacrifice for the Mass; let your suffering count for something,  and what can be of greater value than bringing souls to Christ?

The Third Station: Jesus Falls the First Time:

As I look upon the Third Station, Jesus falls for the first time; a lot of things pass through my mind. One of those things is the Holy Rosary, especially the second part: “Holy Mary Mother of God….” stopping there, reflecting on those words, while I gaze at Jesus falling under the weight of his cross, I have difficulty coming to terms with an apparent contradiction between God who created the heavens and the Earth and the man I see carrying and stumbling with a cross—something I need to think about.

Other thoughts come across my mind; I wonder how the Apostles, the ordained eleven, who were needed to build and strengthen our Church, reacted to the same scene? Did they watch Jesus as he stumbled on his way to Calvary, or only hear about it later on? Surely, wherever they were they were informed—except for the Apostle John who stayed with Jesus even to his death on the cross. How did they react; what was their response?

Previously when Jesus asked his Apostles “….who do you say that I am? Simon Peter said in reply,  ’You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God”(Matthew 16: 15-16, NAB). Yet, initially, after Jesus’ death and burial, they would not or could not believe in the most important miracle in history, his resurrection from the dead!

When he had risen, early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told his companions who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe (Mark 16:9-11).

So what happened to the Apostles between their profession of faith That Jesus was who he claimed to be and their disbelief in his return from the dead? They lost their faith. Bewilderment, fear, and confusion destroyed their hope, and without hope, there is no faith. What they thought, or what they believed, at that time in their life, is not for me to say.

They looked upon the apparent contradiction; God on the one hand, and a suffering man stumbling with his cross on the other, and in their confusion and fear they pushed their faith away, but only temporarily because it was restored tenfold or more with the resurrection of Jesus.

Should we ever become overshadowed with despair, it would be prudent to remember that as the Apostles we don’t see the whole picture, despair will blind us, we must retain hope and persevere in prayer.

The Apostle John resolves the apparent contradiction eloquently in the opening verses of his Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth (John 1:1, 14).

I believe that St. John, standing at the foot of the cross, looked up at our Lord and knew that he was looking at our Creator, our Lord, suffering as a man, for the sake of man, dying as a man to defeat death, and showing by his resurrection to life that we will experience the same.

As The Council of Chalcedon explains, this is Hypostatic Union:

we all with one accord teach the profession of faith in the one identical son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We declare that he is perfect both in his divinity and in his humanity, truly God and truly man….he is consubstanrial with the Father in his divinity, consubstantial with us in his humanity… the distinction between the natures  is in no way removed by their union but rather that the specific character of each nature is preserved and  they are united IN ONE PERSON AND ONE HYPOSTASIS….there is one selfsame only begotten son, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ (The Chalcdonian Creed).