"Avoiding the cross is the essence of the
demonic." - Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
Why, in our modern world, is there a refusal to accept the
Cross? Why do so many Christians accept the Trinity or the
Resurrection of Christ, and yet balk at His Cross? They know that
His Death and His Blood are what saved us from sin; yet they accuse Catholics
of placing too much emphasis on the Cross because we display crucifixes in our
churches, homes, and schools, and because we say that the Mass is the same
Sacrifice as the Sacrifice of the Cross. Why does Western Civilization
embrace "Christ without the Cross"? Why does our modern world
try to turn Christ "into a 'Communist Commissar' who promises nothing but
bread"? Why does our modern world want "the Christ without the
Cross . . . a weak, effeminate Christ unable to save us from
sin"? Why, even as Catholics, do we shrink from viewing the Mass as
a Sacrifice and want instead to speak of it as a
sacred "meal"? Why do we turn away from the
Crucifix, why do we replace the Crucifix with the strange figure of
the Risen Christ bursting forth, not from the tomb, but from the cross?
What does it mean that our modern world only wants Christ as
long as they don't have to have His Cross, too? What kind of Christ is
this that the world wants? In The Priest Is Not His Own, Sheen
explains what Christ is reduced to when the world accepts Him but refuses to
accept His Cross:
None of those are the true identity of Christ; He is our
Savior, our Redeemer from sin, Who came to earth to suffer--on the
Cross--in atonement for our sins. The Cross is the instrument on which
Christ won salvation for us through an excruciatingly painful death, and showed
the height of His Love in His Sacrifice for us. This is why we refuse to
accept the Cross: we're uncomfortable with that for which it stands. Just
as a heart is a symbol of love, so too, the Cross, at its most basic level, is
a symbol of pain and suffering, as Sheen explains in The Eternal
Galilean:
This problem of pain has a symbol, and the symbol is the
cross. But why is the cross typical of the problem of
suffering? Because it is made up of two bars, one horizontal and the
other vertical. The horizontal bar is the bar of death, for death is
prone, prostrate, flat. The vertical bar is the bar of life, for all
life is erect, upright. The crossing of one bar with the other
signifies the contradiction of life and death, joy and sorrow, laughter and
tears, pleasure and pain, our will and God’s will. The only way a
cross can ever be made is by laying the bar of joy against the bar of sorrow;
or, to put it another way, our will is the horizontal bar, God’s will is the vertical
bar; as soon as we place our desires and our wills against God’s desires and
God’s will, we form a cross. Thus the cross is the symbol of pain and
suffering.
And what would Christ be without the Cross? Another
teacher like Buddha or Lao-tzu; a sociologist spreading whipped cream on
socially disapproved behavior; a psycho-analyst reducing guilt to a complex and
banishing sin as a "hangover" from savagery; a preacher too polite to
mention hell or divorce; a reformer for whom all discipline is masochistic and
who proclaims self-restraint and moderation as unnatural and in conflict with
the biological urge to self-expression.
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