Vigils Reading – St John of the Cross

LOVE OF THE CROSS

From an essay by St Edith Stein

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We hear repeatedly that St. John of the Cross desired nothing for himself but

to suffer and be despised. We want to know the reason for this love of suffering. Is

it merely the loving remembrance of the path of suffering of our Lord on earth, a

tender impulse to be humanly close to him by a life resembling his? This does not

seem to correspond to the lofty and strict spirituality of the mystical teacher. And

in relation to the Man of Sorrows, it would almost seem that the victoriously

enthroned king, the divine conqueror of sin, death and hell is forgotten. Did not

Christ lead captivity captive? Has he not transported us into a kingdom of light and

called us to be happy children of our heavenly Father?

The sight of the world in which we live, the need and misery, and the abyss

of human malice, again and again dampens jubilation over the victory of light. The

world is still deluged by mire, and still only a small flock has escaped from it to the

highest mountain peaks. The battle between Christ and the Antichrist is not yet

over. The followers of Christ have their place in this battle, and their chief weapon

is the cross…

The entire sum of human failures from the first Fall up to the Day of

Judgment must be blotted out by a corresponding measure of expiation. The way

of the cross is this expiation. The triple collapse under the burden of the cross

corresponds to the triple fall of humanity: the first sin, the rejection of the Savior

by his chosen people, the falling away of those who bear the name of Christian…

The Savior is not alone on the way of the cross… The archetype of followers

of the cross for all time is the Mother of God. …Everyone who, in the course of time,

has borne an onerous destiny in remembrance of the suffering Savior or who has

freely taken up works of expiation has by doing so canceled some of the mighty

load of human sin and has helped the Lord carry his burden.… The disciples, both

men and women, who surrounded [the Savior] during his earthly life, assist him

on the second stretch. The lovers of the cross whom he has awakened and will

always continue to awaken anew in the changeable history of the struggling

church, these are his allies at the end of time. We, too, are called for that purpose…

But because being one with Christ is our sanctity, and progressively

becoming one with him our happiness on earth, the love of the cross in no way

contradicts being a joyful child of God. Helping Christ carry his cross fills one with

a strong and pure joy, and those who may and can do so, the builders of God’s

kingdom, are the most authentic children of God. And so those who have a

predilection for the way of the cross by no means deny that Good Friday is past

and that the work of salvation has been accomplished. Only those who are saved,

only children of grace, can in fact be bearers of Christ’s cross. Only in union with

the divine Head does human suffering take on expiatory power. To suffer and to

be happy although suffering, to have one’s feet on the earth, to walk on the dirty

and rough paths of this earth and yet to be enthroned with Christ at the Father’s

right hand, to laugh and cry with the children of this world and ceaselessly sing

the praises of God with the choirs of angels — this is the life of the Christian until

the morning of eternity breaks forth

5 from The Hidden Life, volume 4 of The Collected Works of Edith Stein, edited by L. Gelber and Michael Linnsen; ICS Publications, 1992, pp. 91-93.11