The feast of St. Paul of the Cross today reminds us that the Cross of Christ is a sign of contradiction and it can only be understood by the spiritually mature, that is: the spiritually simple. Those with “worldly wisdom” - so to speak - cannot fathom the richness, the majesty, the power and the glory of the Cross of our Crucified Lord - or its practical value!
How can the all powerful Son of God - as he himself claimed to be - allow himself to die an ignominious death of Roman capital punishment? This question baffled the rich and the famous of Jesus day! The answer is: because it proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that God loves his people to the enth degree! Jesus proclaimed that living is for giving! If he did not give his ALL, then his words and his life would have been meaningless. And so - truly being King of the Jews - he gave his all, his very all! He endured a most brutal Passion, experienced a most tortuous death - but then, three days later was rewarded with a newness of life that no one could possibly have imagined beforehand - a newness that he wants to share so much with all of us - all who are baptized into his death and resurrection. It was by way of the Cross that Resurrection occurred!
St. Paul of the Cross (of the 18th century) - our saint of the day - was thoroughly taken by devotion to the Passion of Christ: to examine and enter into Christ’s amazing act of love was a powerful thing for him! It moved him to works of charity for the poor and the sick. It moved him to become a priest. It moved him to found an order of priests who would preach the Passion of Christ and thus lead people more deeply into the reality of Christ - especially those who were fallen away from the Church.
They preached, as Paul preached to the Corinthians of our first reading today, that the message of the Cross is indeed powerful for those who are being saved - those who approach it with awe and with faith; but that it is foolishness for those who are perishing - those who refuse to cooperate with the grace of faith, and are intellectually blind to the reality of redemption.
Jesus tells us in the gospel passage that as he embraced his cross, so we must embrace ours. Those things that God and life send our way are tests of our faith. And the reason why they are so important is because they can communicate most directly and quickly to God the maturity of our life in him, our hope in him, our trust in him - and they thus determine the quantity and quality of his gifts given back to us. He wants us to be filled with his gifts - to overflowing - but he does not want to drown us in them all at once - so by means of demanding acts of faith, he distributes his graces slowly and gradually - until one day we shall be filled.
Therefore - denying our cross - is actually denying our own spiritual growth - and jeopardizing our rightful place in heaven! We really ought not to want to do that!
May we always hunger and thirst for righteousness - and be willing to experience what it takes for that hunger and thirst to be satisfied - especially when it means carrying our carefully weighted, lovingly dispatched Cross!
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