Lord’s Day Reflection: The heart of the Christian message is Christ crucified

By Father Edmund Power, OSB

In this year of grace 2024, the twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time falls on 15 September, the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows; yesterday, 14 September, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross took place; and today, for the first time in the Gospel of Mark, the inevitability of the Cross is proclaimed. This weekend, therefore, we are experiencing a blessed moment of concentration on the Paschal Mystery: the Exaltation looks to the glory of new life; the afflicted Virgin reminds us of the human cost; Jesus’ declaration to the multitude assures us that on the path that leads with Him to the fullness of life, the only reliable means is the Cross.

While, in Paul’s words, Jews ask for signs and Greeks seek wisdom (1 Cor 1:22), the heart of the Christian message is Christ crucified. Yet even after two thousand years, the proclamation remains ambiguous and uncomfortable. The voluntary acceptance of suffering and death is possible only if a person has somehow internalized the Paschal Mystery and therefore believes in it. Otherwise, it might look like masochism or fatalism, like pathetic weakness or cowardice, like a loss of courage, like an abrogation of human responsibility. Advising people to read their sufferings, or those of their loved ones, as a manifestation of take up his cross, Suffering can breed anger, cynicism, and contempt. Some mystics have apparently sought out suffering in order to identify with the passion of Christ. Yet this seems useless, for in this “vale of tears,” suffering seeks us out and finds us. It is the way we take it that ennobles us spiritually.

Action and passion seem to be opposites; acting and submitting, being active and being passive, can also be opposites. But is choosing to submit always an attitude of cowardice? The challenge behind Jesus’ rebuke to Peter, Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men. reminds us that the refusal to “react,” to associate insult with vengeance, injustice with rage, and the good fortune of others with envy, is what God’s side it’s about.

The song of the suffering servant that provides today’s first reading is a reminder of the mentality of the men’s side and the divine counter-logic that is difficult to grasp; in Paul’s words, a stumbling block … And foolishness…but to those who are called…Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.