Triumph of the Cross

Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ is among us! 

     Today’s celebration has resonances with Good Friday in that the Cross, with Jesus upon it, is at the center. As Paul points out in scripture, the crucified Christ is a scandal to non-believers. Why would it be a “scandal”; why would they care?

     They care because, if true, it has rather uncomfortable implications. If it is true Jesus was God’s presence on earth as human, then God’s own creation crucified its creator! What’s more, God allowed that to happen. Christ is the Cross. He is the Way, the Truth and the Life of God and we are called to follow him to the cross. But the story, as we well know, is not complete.

     We follow Christ to the cross so we can follow Christ through the cross to the resurrection. So, the cross is not the goal of the Christian life, but resurrection; however, to be resurrected, one must first be crucified. Saint Paul suggests that “...if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his “(Rom.6:5).

     Specifically, St. Paul preaches that we need to crucify our “old self” with Christ. In other words, we must seek the death of the false self, the self that rejects the Good News of Christ. Paul’s poetic language can be a bit difficult to navigate, but in essence it is part of Paul’s notion of the “new man’, the person who is reborn in Christ by “crucifying” the old one.

     Few, if any of us, will be called to be physically tortured and to die for the Gospel, but we know of Christians for whom daily this is a reality in Syria and other parts of the Middle East. Most likely ours will be the daily sacrifice of our selfishness and self-centeredness in favor of a life of grace, of living for others the way Christ lived for the world. That God’s grace triumphs over sin and death is the Triumph of the Cross.