Friday, March 2, 2007
An Eternal Paradox
(By Fr Marcial Maciel, LC)
Christ’s Cross is an eternal paradox. A life brutally cut down in the fullness of maturity. A failed, naked and abandoned man, his life ebbing in the death rattle of a slow and horrible agony ... Everything about the Cross beckons us to the pit of despair; and yet there, precisely in the densest and bitterest darkness, Christ realizes the most luminous and meaningful act open to a man, offering himself to his Father and each one of us in an act of perfect love. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (see John 15:13).His executioners could nail his body to the wood, but they could not chain his freedom: No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (see John 10:18). Christ crucified is the freest man that ever lived; nothing and no one could stifle his heart nor stop him loving his Father and men. His love for me was stronger than death itself (see Canticles 8:6).
Such a death cannot be improvised. That last, heroic act of self-giving was the fulfillment of a Plan of salvation, the end result of a host of little acts of giving throughout his life. After Christ’s death there is no circumstance in our lives, no matter how painful or difficult it might seem, to which our love cannot give the value of redemption. We all carry our personal cross. For some this is only an instrument of suffering and the cause of perdition because they do not know how to love; for others, however, their cross is a cause of deliverance and happiness because they fix their gaze on Christ and offer themselves with him out of love: "Today you will be with me in Paradise" (see Luke 23:43). What really dehumanizes man is to bear a cross without Christ - to live, suffer and die without love.
Labels: Spirituality
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