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.