The very centre of Christian life is Christ from whom it takes its name, and the Christian life is the earthly life of Jesus lived by us under the influence of the Risen Christ. Jesus had great difficulty, in fact He does not seem to have succeeded, in teaching His Apostles that He was to suffer and die. They only really accepted the scandal of the Cross after He had risen and sent them the Holy Spirit. Once the Holy Spirit had come and the Church had been founded and sent on its way, it was Christ Crucified and Risen Who was preached, and the Risen life Our Lord was seen as being due to His Crucifixion. Without the Cross there is no resurrection.
It is hardly possible to say too often that our way to heaven is the Way of the Cross. The Christian life is the imitation of Christ, and He chose the Way of the Cross. It is quite true that He carried the Cross for us. It is true that He suffered on our behalf. It is true that He carried our punishment Himself. But He did not choose to dissociate us from Himself by doing everything for us in such a way that we have nothing to do. “Do this in memory of Me” He said as He committed Himself to the Garden of Gethsemane, to the scourging at the pillar, and to the Cross on Calvary. Earlier on, before they were near to seeing what He really meant, Our Lord had told all His followers, “If you want to be My disciple, take up your cross and follow Me. . .
[And lest we conclude] that although we have to accept the crosses that come our way, apart from them we can enjoy ourselves and live a life no more strict or self-disciplined that the average good person around us, who has no religion but is kind and cheerful under troubles and generally does good, Jesus said, “Deny yourself, and take your cross and follow Me.” This charter of disciples . . . demands that we not only endure or accept the cross, but that at least in some degree we choose it as part of our own lives. There are no exceptions to this instruction for Christians. . . We have to have the spirit of Christ Crucified, not just Christ glorified.
The demands of the Christian life and the quality of even the minimum Christian spirit are such that the only way to be a follower of Christ . . . is to take our vocation so seriously and responsibly that we positively struggle to get free from the self-indulgent spirit and the easy spirit and the spirit of opposition to suffering in our lives. You cannot be a Christian unless you are wholehearted in denying yourself prudently, taking up willingly the cross God sends, and following Christ Our Lord in His complete dedication to God, to asceticism, to Christian poverty, chastity and obedience, to prayer and to good works. . .
The most special gift that Our Lord can give us as a sign of His favour is a special attitude to the Cross. All Christians must take it up if they want to be disciples at all, but those who want to be beloved disciples are invited to come the Cross voluntarily, and it is the choice of the Cross rather than its mere acceptance that enables the Cross to get at that remnant of self-love within us and set us free for God and for others without any selfishness left in us. . .
God will give anyone of us who is a real Friend of the Cross and who really is resolved to follow the difficult upward path to greater perfection a cross specially designed . . . to get right into that self-centre of us and open it up to Him. . . It will be a weakness or a temptation or a phobia or a compulsion or something else quite unacceptable as far as your ideas of the will of God and the saving cross of Christ are concerned. If you are to lose that final interior prison of self and open out to God, this impossible cross that He sends you has to be accepted and taken up. . .
The Church has always taught, as Jesus and St. Paul did, that each person is called to be holy, to grow into a perfect member of Christ, and this path to holiness is one that requires real dedication and real commitment. Let us see ourselves as having, each one of us, a very special and individual call from Christ to follow Him and to carry out a real mission for Him, even if it is a purely passive one in the case of the very old or very ill. Carrying the Cross in the right spirit is a very great work indeed and is a real share in the activity of Christ at its most valuable and effective. Whatever we do in our various vocations, may it be seasoned by the Cross, and may we truly be Friends of that Cross.
