As Jesus was going up to Jerusalem, he took the Twelve disciples aside by themselves, and said to them on the way, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death, and hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and scourged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.” [Matthew 20:17–19]
Oftentimes,
the full message of the Gospel is difficult for us to accept. This is because the full message of the Gospel
will always centrally point us to the sacrifice of the Cross. Sacrificial love and the full embrace of the
Cross needs to be seen, understood, loved, fully embraced and confidently
proclaimed. But how is this done? As always,
we start with Jesus.
Jesus wasn’t
afraid of the truth. He knew that His
suffering and death was imminent, and He was ready and willing to accept this
truth without hesitation. He didn’t see
His Cross in a negative light. He didn’t
look at it as a tragedy to be avoided. He
didn’t allow fear to deter Him. Instead,
Jesus looked at His imminent sufferings in the light of truth. He saw His suffering and death as a glorious
act of love that He was soon to offer, and, therefore, He wasn’t afraid to not
only embrace these sufferings but also to speak of them with confidence and
courage.
In our own
lives, we’re given the invitation to imitate Jesus’ courage and love every time
we must face something difficult in life. When this happens, some of the most common temptations
are to be angry about the difficulty, or to look for ways to avoid it, or to
blame others, or to give into despair and the like. There are numerous coping mechanisms that kick
in by which we tend to try and avoid the crosses that await us.
But what if
we followed the example of our Lord instead? What if we faced any and every pending cross
with love, courage and a willing embrace? What if instead of looking for a way out, we
looked for a way in, so to speak? That
is, we looked for a way to embrace our suffering in a sacrificial way, without
hesitancy, in imitation of Jesus’ embrace of His cross. Every cross in life has the potential of
becoming an instrument of much grace in our own lives and in the lives of
others. Therefore, from the perspective
of grace and eternity, crosses must be embraced, not avoided or cursed.
My
suffering Lord, You freely embraced the injustice of the Cross with love and
courage. You saw beyond the apparent scandal and suffering and transformed the
evil done to You into the greatest act of love ever known. Give me the grace to
imitate Your perfect love and to do so with the strength and confidence that
You had. Jesus, I trust in You.
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