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When a person with an inquiring mind looks out at the world, he or she sees a confusing welter of people, nations, events, images, and experiences, and naturally asks the question, "How am I to view all of this? How am I to interpret my own experience, how to put into some kind of order this seeming chaos of sight and sound and history? Shall I look at things in a serious, or in a light-hearted way? Is life a comedy or a tragedy? How can I settle on the really important things? Where, if anywhere, is happiness to be found? What is the meaning of it all?"
There are a thousand possible keys with which to interpret the world, ourselves, everything around us. A thousand possible, but only one true one, one given to us by God himself. That one true interpretive key is the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ.
Take a look at the long history of the world, the rising and falling of kingdoms and nations, the growth of civilizations, the whole tale of power and glory and war. What does it all mean? Gaze upon the Holy Cross.
Look at current events, at world politics, at the hopes and tensions of our time, at elections, and power struggles and alliances and international diplomacy. How to interpret it? By the Cross of Christ.
Turn your attention to the whole world of finance, of business, of ships and planes and trucks plying the seas and air and highways, of phones and computers buzzing in an incessant clamor of communication, of the flow of billions of dollars over the earth. How evaluate it all? Look at the Cross of Jesus Christ.
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Have your eye caught by the world of arts and entertainment, by the TV, the movie and music industries, the stage, the arts, the rise to fame of the latest sensations, the fashionable and the sophisticated in the world of stardom and artistic accomplishment. How to understand it? See it in the light of the Cross.
And then look within, to secret hopes and fears, to nameless sufferings endured, to a life of mixed beauty and ugliness, of goodness and evil, of blessing and of anguish. How make sense of it all, how get to the heart of it and understand it? See it in the light of the Holy Cross of Jesus Christ. The cross of Christ is the great sign given to us that puts everything else in its right place. It is the anchor of truth in a shifting and changing world. It is the pattern of all true life, the standard by which everything on earth is to be judged and understood.
"I knew nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified." So said St. Paul to the Corinthians. He preached among them "nothing" except this one thing, which is everything. The Cross of Christ is at the center of our world, at the great act by which God has saved and re-created the human race. That extraordinary act is mystically brought to us in the celebration of the Sacred Mysteries: the Holy Cross at the heart of the Holy Mass. This from today's Mass prayer:
The suffering and death of your Son brought life to the whole world, moving our hearts to praise your glory. The power of the Cross reveals your judgment on this world and the kingship of Christ crucified.
Lift high the Cross!
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† "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave His only Son, so that all who believe in Him might not perish but might have eternal life." (John 3: 13-17)
† Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at the disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
(Mark 8: 27-38)
THE LESSON OF THE OYSTER
An oyster is soft, tender and vulnerable. Needing the sanctuary of its shell in order to "breathe" water. Sometimes while an oyster is breathing, a grain of sand will enter its shell and become part of the oyster's life from then on.
Such grains of sand, though microscopic, cause the oyster a great deal of pain. But the oyster does not change its soft nature because of a particle of sand. It does not become hard and leathery in order not to feel. It continues to open its shell to the ocean, to breathe in order to live.
But it does respond to the suffering in its midst. Over time, the oyster wraps the grain of sand in thin translucent layers until it has created something of great value in the place where it is most vulnerable to its pain.
A pearl might be thought of as an oyster's response to it suffering.
[From My Grandfather's Blessings by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.]
CONNECTION: We all have grains of sand that hurt, irritate and diminish our lives; all of us have experienced or will experience loss and hopelessness. Such "grains of sand" are a part of everyone's life. Peter's urging Jesus not to talk about the passion that is before them and keep it "upbeat" is an attempt to deny the reality of suffering. For Jesus, the challenge of the pain and disappointment we confront is not to sink into self-pity or deny our anger or passively accept the role of victim, but to accept the reality of our suffering and pain and transform it into "pearls" of generous compassion, humble growth, and selfless consolation.
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