WORD ALIVE
There is a true story about a Russian general, the governor of a province in one of the former Soviet Republics.
Concerned with the outbreak of a rash of petty crimes, he issued an edict that anyone caught and convicted would receive one hundred lashes. As fate would have it, the first person to be arrested under the new edict was the general’s own mother. She had been caught pilfering in a store.
He was in a terrible dilemma torn by the need to uphold the law and his love for his mother. The villagers assembled in the market place for the flogging and just as his mother’s hands were being tied to the post, the general stepped forward, released her, pushed her gently aside, bared his back and took the one hundred lashes in her place.
The story illustrates the profound love of God for us. Because of the sin of our first parents, every one of us is born in sin. We deserve God’s punishment. But like the general in the story, Jesus offered himself to take upon himself the punishment due to all of humankind.
The three crosses
In the great drama commemorating the suffering of the Lord, we have to recognize the meaning of Christ's suffering and death in our day-to-day life.
In that afternoon scene of Good Friday, there were three crosses. First, there was the Cross of Rejection. On it hung the unrepentant thief. If ever there was an example of wasted pain, this was it. In one cry for mercy he could have been saved but instead, he chose to vent his anger on God.
So often the cross we carry is one of rejection. We carry bitterness in our hearts through life.
Cross of acceptance
Then there was the cross of acceptance. The good thief was the last person to speak a kind word for Christ. The cross for him had the purfiying effect of leading him to an acknowledgment of his sinfulness and his need of God’s saving mercy. He made one cry for mercy and in that cry he was saved.
He was a good thief, indeed. In his last agonizing moments, he was able to steal heaven no less, with Jesus himself pronouncing, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”
Cross of redemption
In the center was the cross of Redemption on which hung the one “by whose wounds we were healed.” This is the cross of Christ.
The Lord can take our crosses and turn them to redemptive use.
The question is: to which of the hanged men do we identify ourselves? The unrepentant thief who died with bitterness and anger in his heart? The thief who asks for mercy? Or the innocent “criminal” who turned suffering into redemptive act?
Offer suffering
The Greek Stoics answer to suffering is: “Just bear them.” But the Christian response is: instead of merely bearing them, offer them in union with the sufferings of Christ, thus making them redemptive.
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“Carrying our cross” does not mean masochism or fatalism. Meaning, we just have to accept our fate and not do something to remedy it. Jesus himself pitied those who were sick of fever, dropsy, blind, crippled, and healed them.
We can avoid our sicknesses, for instance, by shunning unhealthy lifestyle like cigarette smoking which causes cancer, drinking in excess or eating food dripping with cholesterol.
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But if the sufferings are inevitable or beyond human control like the devastating natural calamities, the pains of old age, an accident or an undeserved treatment, the Christian attitude is to offer them and uniting them with the sufferings of Christ so they become meritorious, redemptive, and not wasted.
In the words of the Apostle St. Peter: “Rejoice in the measure that you share Christ’s sufferings. When his glory is revealed, you will rejoice exultantly” (1 Peter 4,12).