Carrying Our Cross

 As Disciples of Christ we are called to decide every day to pick up our cross and follow Him. This goes much further than bearing our own little problems from day to day. It means that we are actually called to set aside those problems, and not let them distract us. We are called to die to ourselves, to no longer make decisions based on our self-serving interests. Instead we are to live completely, entirely for Christ. We follow Him by giving up everything, even our lives if necessary, for God.

Suffering, when we bear it with faith and unite it to Christ's suffering, is like a fire that purifies our hearts, purging them of selfishness.

The cross, when we carry it with Christ, pushes us out of our comfort zone so that we can develop our spiritual potential to the full. The historian Christopher Dawson put it this way, “(The Church) wins not by majorities, but by martyrs, and the cross is her victory.”

Saint Augustine made the point more clearly:

“There is more courage in a man who faces rather than flees the storms of life, and who holds cheap the opinions of men. Earthly life is a school, training him for life eternal, a school in which he learns to use temporal goods in the spirit of a pilgrim, refusing to be enslaved by them. And in which his strength is put to the test and his character purified by the crosses he has to bear.” (The City of God, I.22).

Saint Margaret Mary was the nun who received the revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She understood deeply the connection between God's love and the crosses he sends us.

“Nothing unites so closely to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ as the cross which is the most precious pledge of his love. You must constantly carry the cross which He lays on you, be it interior or exterior, without growing weary or complaining of its length or weight. Does it not suffice that it has been given you by the hands of a friend whose all-loving heart had destined it for you from all eternity?

Trust to the goodness of the Lord in the crosses which He sends you; He will never abandon you, for He knows how to draw good from our ills and His glory from our trials.”

We are called to deny ourselves. We take up our cross, the burden we assume by choosing to be Disciples, and we follow. By doing this we gain far more than we lose, we find our true selves.

It took many years for Saint augustine to find his true self. He was an orator from North Africa and his skill as a wordsmith was legendary. His mother was Catholic but he himself lived far from God.

In his writings he described how he looked for happiness and purpose everywhere. He plunged into every pleasure, but, in the end, they all left him empty.

Finally, one day, he heard a child's voice saying, “Tolle, Lege,” latin for “Take up and read.” So he picked up a bible and and his eyes fell on Romans 13:13. “Let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day.”

At that moment, through the Bible, Christ was asking Him the same question he asked Peter. “Who do you say that I am?”

Saint Augustine realized that he had to change his life. He left his selfish search for pleasure, and eventually became one of the greatest saints in history.

Like Saint Peter, he acknowledged Christ as his savior. And he discovered a joy and a purpose he never imagined.

This is what Saint Paul means when he tells us we must clothe ourselves with Christ, not as an external garment but rather we must lose ourselves completely in Him. As Christians we do not each wear our own personal garment, we put on the garment of Christ. The living Christ takes all of us into Himself, and we become one, one with each other and one in Him.

We cannot avoid making decisions; we all must make them everyday. But we can decide, everyday, who we are. Are we here to just get by with a minimum of discomfort? Or are we part of something larger and greater than ourselves? Who are we willing to give up our lives for?

Pax Vobiscum