The infinity in a gesture

From this Sunday’s Gospel passage, where we perceive all the radical nature of the Christian proposal, we want to highlight only one expression of Jesus, where he says: “He who does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10 ,38). First of all we ask ourselves: what does it mean to take up one’s cross? We need to understand well what the cross was for Jesus, in order to then understand what the cross is for the disciple. However, we must clarify an important aspect, and it is this: we must not look at Jesus starting from the cross; on the contrary, it is necessary to read the cross starting from Jesus. The theologian Giovanni Colombo wrote: «It is not the cross that makes Jesus Christ great; it is Jesus Christ who redeems even the cross, which is properly to be understood, not rhetorically to exalt». As is known, for Scripture the cross is the death of the cursed by God (cf. Dt 21:23; Gal 3:13); for pagan authors it is the torture proper to slaves (Tacitus), the most cruel and horrible (Cicero). Whoever dies on the cross is therefore an enemy of the community of believers and harmful to the polis, to the established order. Jesus died on the cross on April 7 of the year 30. This death immediately appeared a scandal (cf. 1Cor 1:23), to the point that some Christians even ended up denying its historicity, and the Koran, subsequently, will come to affirm that Jesus was replaced at the last moment by another man because God’s Messiah certainly could not die in that way. Yet authentic faith will not hesitate to affirm that it was precisely on the cross that Jesus narrated God (cf. Jn 1:18), bore witness to the truth (cf. Jn 18:37), and manifested the Father’s love for the sinful humanity (cf. Jn 3:16), thus transforming the ignoble instrument of death into a throne of glory. Therefore, what redeemed us was not so much the suffering of Jesus but his love for him. We can also say this: Jesus did not simply offer his suffering to the Father for our salvation, but what he wanted to be in that suffering, that is, a pure gift of love that went all the way, to the extreme, to totality. , up to those humanly unthinkable summits which are capable of saving. Therefore, to return to Columbus’ suggestion, what made Jesus great on Calvary was not so much his suffering (unspeakable and great without any doubt) but his love for him (infinite, gratuitous and, let us add, obstinate). . The Christian, we repeat, therefore does not adore the cross but the one who allowed himself to be nailed to it, thus giving meaning to what humanly speaking has no meaning, that is, physical, moral and psychic suffering of which the cross is also a synthesis and symbol. But “carrying the cross” has another very important aspect which is not always highlighted. It should be known that when the condemned man walked towards the place of execution carrying the gallows, along the way he was mocked and insulted by the crowd. The crowd was held to this derision. This also happened to Jesus, of course, and highlights how for the people, the religious and political leaders and also for the disciples themselves, the work and message of the Nazarene appeared in that tragic hour as a failure and a great disappointment (see Lk 24:21).
The cross is a way of giving, of solidarity, of renouncing to make one’s life the center around which everything must converge; it is therefore a path of love where even just a glass of fresh water given to a brother or sister can become a gesture that reveals the Infinite.

Commentary by b. Sandro Carotta, osb
Abbazia di Santa Maria – Praglia (Italy)

Translation by f. Mark Hargreaves,
Prinknash Abbey