Meditation for the Fifth Friday of Lent:
Why the Cross?
Why of all the possible modes of execution was the Cross chosen?
The ancient fathers of the Church list a number of reasons. Here are a few of them:
Crucifixion was reserved for the worst criminals and was considered the worst punishment... In absolute humiity Christ takes on the worst of what Humanity can offer so as to raise us up to the best...
Sin and death entered the world through what hung from a tree... so it was conquered and banished by He who hung from the tree of the Cross.
Christ is nailed between heaven and earth. His arms open wide in the embrace of inifinite Divine Love. He restores the ancient communion between heaven and earth forever in His own death.
The Vertical axis of the Cross represents the Eternal Now of God piercing for ever the horizontal axis of time, thus in the incarnation of Christ and through His passion and death, we have access to the eternal loving NOW of God forever...
At the centre of this piercing we have the pierced heart of Christ from which flows the streams of Sacramental Grace that we call the Church...
This is the Atonement, literally the "At-One-Ment", that Christ accomplished through His death on the Cross...the rebalancing and healing of the ancient wound of sin that separated Humanity from God and threw the whole cosmos out of balance...now healed by Christ through the Cross it becomes our way home again. As St. Augustine says, "He descended so that we could ascend with Him."
Wherever you are today pause a moment and simply consider the Cross.
Pax +
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