The Triumph of the Cross

A reflection on Last Sunday’s Liturgy in the light of the thought of Monsignor Luigi Giussani, founder of the church movement Communion and Liberation.

This past Sunday something a little unusual happened. The celebration of the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time was superseded by the celebration of the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. Sundays of whatever season of the liturgical year normally override celebrations attached to specific dates. Exceptions are made, however, for solemnities like those of Sts. Peter and Paul (June 29) and the Birth of John the Baptist (June 24), and for feasts of the Lord such as the Transfiguration (August 6) and the Triumph of the Cross (September 14) because of their importance for the Church and in the lives of Christians.

The Triumph of the Cross is a kind of paradoxical feast. In what sense can we consider the Cross a triumph? It seems to be more of a failure. Monsignor Giussani, in his meditation on the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary writes: “God who came among men goes to the scaffold: defeated, a failure; a moment, a day, three days of nothingness, in which everything is finished. This is the condition, the condition of sacrifice in its most profound meaning: it appears to be a failure, it appears not to succeed, it appears that the others are right.” And yet the Cross is a triumph both for Christ and for us. It is the victory of His love over sin and evil.

Monsignor Giussani often pointed out that what should be most obvious to us at any given moment when we stop to think about it, is that I am not the source of my own existence: at this moment I am not making myself, I am not creating myself. Instead Another is giving me life, Another is the source of my existence. The problem, though, is that although I receive my life from Another, I do not value it and keep it as a gift. I give it away, I sell it cheaply, I squander it like the prodigal son, and find myself bereft. It is Christ, though, who redeems my life, who buys it back for me, who restores it. And He does this at the price of the Cross. Christ both gives me my life in the first place and, when I have lost it and thrown it away, He gives it back to me again, He restores it. He does whatever is necessary, whatever is required, enduring even the Cross, to give back to me the gift He gave me in the first place.

Jesus does this by enduring and outlasting everything evil: insult, betrayal, aggression, torture, hatred, abandonment by both His friends and (seemingly) by the Father. All of the venom of humanity’s sinfulness is vented upon Him, and yet He remains unconquered in His love for us and His trust in the Father: “Father, forgive them; they know not what they do… Into Your hands I commend my spirit.” The positivity of the love of Christ outlasts all the negativity of humanity’s hate and (if you will) crosses the finish line (“It is finished”) as the victorious and triumphant champion.

Perhaps this is why Monsignor Giussani continues in that same meditation on the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery: “Remaining with Him even when it seems that everything is finished or has finished; staying next to Him as His Mother did–only this faithfulness brings us, sooner or later, to the experience that no one outside the Christian community can have in this world, the experience of the Resurrection. And we can leave for another love this Christ who moves into death to deliver us from evil so that we may change, so that the Eternal Father may regenerate in us what the crime of forgetfulness has outstripped! This man throws himself onto the cross to brandish it, to embrace it, to be nailed on it, to die, to be one with that wood: ‘Will we leave him for another love?’ This Man pours out his blood for us and shall we leave him for another love?” And thus he invites us to share in the triumph of the Cross, to allow the love of Christ to be victorious in our lives.

The way this happens in our lives is when, like the Israelites in the first reading from chapter 21 of the Book of Numbers, we renew our gaze upon Christ, upon Reality. Like them, we have all been bitten by the serpent. Our vision is so easily clouded by this venom. The sure sign of this for as, as for the Israelites, is our discontent, dissatisfaction and complaining. But when our gaze is renewed and our vision cleared we discover that “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him may not die but may have eternal life,” (John 3:16) – a phrase strikingly similar to one that has recently been repeated often in CL circles: “every hair of your head is counted.” These are words that provide an unshakable certainty for our lives.

I preached this past Sunday to a group of Kenyans who endured a terrifying ordeal during the post-election rioting that swept across their country earlier this year. The coordinator of the CL community in Nairobi wrote a testimony of how the reality of the love of Christ that is more powerful than evil and death sustained them during that time of darkness. It appeared in the February 2008 issue of the CL magazine Traces. In fact I had actually read portions of that testimony to a group of young people at the closing Mass of a YOUTH 2OOO retreat in Pleasantville, NY on the Fifth Sunday of Lent this past March. It was amazing to find myself in the midst of those who actually went through that trial and personally verified that the Cross is indeed triumphant and faithfully remaining with Christ even in times of apparent total failure brings us to the experience of the Resurrection.

[Joachim Koech’s complete testimony can be found at http://www.traces-cl.com/, in the archives of the February 2008 edition of Traces under the title “Kenya: The True Winners Among Divisions.”]