Sunday Gospel
The Crucifix
Matthew 16: 21–26
“Those who look for Christ without the cross will find in this world the cross without Christ.”
Such were the wise words of the priest celebrant in the homily of the online Mass I watched last week. He mentioned this in reference to Matthew 16:21–27.
This Gospel story happened right after Peter confessed that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. In this Gospel story, Jesus started telling the disciples about his passion and death, and Peter chided him telling him that this would not happen to him. Jesus rebuked Peter, telling him to get behind him, and said to his disciples, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).
When I was younger, I already knew that we, Roman Catholics, have the cross with Jesus on it, and the Protestant denominations just have plain crosses in their churches. No one knows how Jesus looks like, people would say; hence, putting an image invented on the cross is just a representation. And so it was a thought I accepted. It was only when I grew up when I started to appreciate the crucifix more. (Yes, crucifix is what we call the cross with Jesus on it.)
Perhaps in the time of the great Christian persecution in the Roman empire, a cross alone would suffice. A cross is something that everyone at that time understood to mean capital punishment.
However, at the present time, the impact of the plain cross is no longer as strong as it used to be. A child, for example, before studying the faith, will not know that the cross stands for capital punishment. Even older people who have not studied the faith well, will not understand it completely either. We do even have jewelries with crosses on them, and these crosses have jewels too.
And that is where the beauty of the crucifix comes in. The crucifix by virtue of having the suffering Jesus on it shows us the very meaning of what a plain cross fails to show in modern times. The crucifix shows us the suffering and death of Jesus. It is a sacrifice, one that is paid with so much by God for our sake. The least we can do is to deny ourselves and take up our cross each day.
I know the wise priest talked about Christ without the cross, and here I am talking about the cross without Christ.
I would say that they are indeed the same. When we look at the cross and see it as something that symbolizes Christ, we dissociate suffering from the cross. When we dissociate suffering from the cross, we reduce the cross to a mere symbol — a mere shape — devoid of meaning.
And doing so, we are, in reality, looking for Christ without suffering — Christ without the cross. And there we hear the second part of the priest’s statement, “they will find in this world the cross without Christ”, and this time, the cross is really the cross of the Roman times — hardships, sufferings, death.
While it is very good to have a crucifix, may we not forget the suffering Christ when we see plain crosses.
Ave Maria!
