Church members and volunteers raise the wooden cross on the Chevin, near Otley in northern England on Apr 2, 2022, an annual gathering on Otley Chevin where the Chevin Cross is left in place for the duration of the Easter celebrations. The 30ft wooden cross was first put up in 1968. A new cross was made in 2000, using wood from timbers salvaged from the bombed Arndale Centre in Manchester on Jun 15 1996. (Photo by Oli Scarff / AFP)
By Fr Ferdinand Hernando, MB
Mar 21 2024
When the Christian faith becomes increasingly difficult to live by, when challenges become as overwhelming as sweat and blood blurring one’s vision, the temptation grows stronger for us Christians to cast the cross from our shoulders and leave it behind.
In the careless hope that perhaps someone else; someone more capable and daring, or at least a hesitant onlooker or reluctant passer-by; might be compelled to try bearing it.
If only to carry it a bit further, then, just maybe, it is precisely the time, or indeed the exact moment, when a Christian’s lifelong sacrifice approaches completion.
And who knows, by taking a few more faltering steps, we might find ourselves at Mt. Calvary, ready to fall once more. This time, however, it would be a final fall; this time, falling with the cross we bear.
With a touch of hindsight, we suddenly recall the entire journey of courage and surrender, the long story of faith filled with youthful idealism and resoluteness, the recklessness of empowered adulthood, the wavering determination of midlife, and the agonizing self-doubt of our twilight years.
O that cross of victimhood!
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