Fourth Rector's Conference
March 10, 2019
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
See
how the Cross of Christ stands revealed as the tree of life
The antiphon from the Office of Readings today
offers us a great deal of insight into the mystery we celebrate each year in
this season of Lent
See
how the Cross of Christ stands revealed as the tree of life
On our annual Rome trip, one of the places I like
to visit is the Church of Santa Croce in Jerusalem. The basilica is located
near the Cathedral of St. John Lateran and is built over the former home of the
mother of the Emperor Constantine, St. Helen. When St. Helen went to the Holy
Land to search for the cross of Christ and the place of Calvary, she had
inspired good fortune, locating not only the place upon which the present Church
of the Holy Sepulcher is built, but also the instruments of the Passion, the
cross, the nails, the crown of thorns, the title.
She returned home to Rome with these treasures
and built a great church on her on property but before she built the church,
she imported literally tons of dirt from the city of Jerusalem so that the
great reliquary could literally be in
Jerusalem, thus the name of the Church.
Through the years, the “relic of the True Cross”
has been splintered and has proliferated, being found in place around the
world, some of which St. Helen could have never dreamt of. Of course, we do not
need to have the physical remnant of the Cross in order to understand its
power, we are, after all, professionals in the Church world, exploring in infinite
ways the nature of metaphor, image, symbol, sacrament.
What does the cross mean for us?
The cross of Christ connects us to the passion.
This year on Good Friday we will all celebrate the solemn unveiling of the
cross, we will approach it with reproaches. We will venerate it, each in his
own way and we will feel it. We will
undoubtedly as we do each year, feel the power of the cross at that moment,
understand, even without words, its impact in our lives, in the life of
everyone who creeps upon the earth. The cross of Christ connects us to the
passion. And …
The cross of Christ is the directional sign that
unites east and west, north and south. The cross points in all directions and
therefore brings in all peoples. Here is this man struggling to keep his family
alive in war-torn Syria, here is the woman bravely raising her child alone,
here is the boy abandoned in the streets of a South American city. Here is the
girl, harboring her brother and sisters in poverty stricken Africa. The cross
of Christ is a directional sign. And …
The cross of Christ is the moral compass by which
we guide our lives. All of us are drawn into that saving flood pouring down
from the face of Christ. All of us are standing in the need of prayer tonight
and every night of our lives. All of us are drawn into the circle of that
compass, that place in which the authentic story of mankind is written in the
syllables of sacrifice. The cross of Christ is a moral compass. And …
The cross of Christ is an instrument of torture.
See how our Lord, innocent and without sin, was nailed to the wood of that
cross. See how his sacred, God-like body was rent asunder by its awful justice.
See how it tortures us in our damnable complacency. And …
See
how the Cross of Christ stands revealed as the tree of life
The cross of Christ takes us back to the
beginning, to Adam and Eve in the garden, to the disastrous choice they made
there, to the fall, that awful fall by which all of our woe was introduced into
the world and thus initiated a testament of evil.
The cross of Christ draws us back to the failure
of our forebears, to Israel and its frantic desire to create a covenant with
its Creator, a guarantee of salvation even in the face of rancid evil.
The cross of Christ points us back to the tower
of Babel, to the introduction of cacophony in the world, of speaking languages
inimical to the unified and unifying language of love.
The cross of Christ points us back to Noah, to
that patented, pathetic remnant of a the family of humankind standing on the
flood-soaked deck of that ship hauling the refuse of the world and riding the
arc of a rainbow into a newness that would soon be sullied yet again.
The cross of Christ harbors that rock upon which
old Abraham, listening to the voice of the Almighty, brought his only son, his
hope, brought him to the brink of a sacrificial death only to have his hand
stayed by an angel, introducing into the world a series of meaningless
sacrifices committed by wood, the smoke of lambs and doves rising as
dissipating ash into the stratosphere.
The cross of Christ is the tree that caught young
Absalom by his hair even as he betrayed his father David.
The cross of Christ is fashioned from those
cedars of Lebanon by which the paneling of the old Temple of Solomon was made
holy.
The cross of Christ is the platform upon which
those prophets spoke, raising their voices over and against the din of
deception. It is that wood upon which their petitions were inscribed, nailed to
the doors of the sanctuary
The cross of Christ is that evil in history by
which it seemed, that the lessons God intended to teach could not be learned. That
lesson could not be learned because for all of the wood in the world, no one
could teach those lessons, not judges, not kings, not prophets. The evil in
history persisted like a gross spider or a virus, infecting the human race
Wars and destruction and greed and lust
prevailed, it could not be overcome by all of the smoking wood-drunk sacrifices
of the Temple. And yet …
See
how the Cross of Christ stands revealed as the tree of life
The cross here in this sanctuary stands as a
sentinel to remind us of the power of evil that still can hold sway in our
lives and in our world. It exists today in powerful leaders who do not care about
their people. It persists in folks whose outrageous wealth makes them insensate
to the cries of the poor. It exists in our lives as malevolence to overcome, or
to which to wield. It exists in our sullenness and our snarkiness. It exists in
our selfishness and our pride. It exists in our failure to acknowledge that we
are weak, we are complexly and utterly dependent upon one thing, one thing only:
The Cross of Christ.
In this Lenten season, we are called to examine
the cross of Christ for what it is. Why did God become man? The answer is simple,
and utterly mysterious. God became a man to accomplish what only God could
accomplish. He became a man to pay the debt that only Man owed.
See
how the Cross of Christ stands revealed as the tree of life
And so we are called to cling to the cross. We
are compelled to worship the cross, because we know the evil of the world and
the evil which lurks in our hearts.
We know that we look for countless things to save
us, even here. We look to our personalities, our wealth, our intellect, our
spiritual accomplishments, our cunning.
Even here, in the shadow of the cross, we
experience the essential vacuum that is inside each of us and we try to fill
that space, that void illegitimately with food, with drink, with sex, with
friends, with the entertainment.
There is nothing less becoming to a priesthood
lived in the shadow of the cross than frivolity, freely chosen as a way of
life.
Here in this house of formation we are called to
realize in the shadow of the cross that we are told, reminded when we look upon
the crucifix that it is our openness to the cross, our openness to the
invitation of the cross that is our only hope in this troubled world, our only
salvation for the next.
See
how the Cross of Christ stands revealed as the tree of life
How do we approach the cross?
Like the mother of Jesus, cradling
memories hugging those dear feet and remembering in its pierced shadows the
tiny feet that first kicked straw in a manger in Bethlehem.
Like the mother who hears in
her mind’s ear angel wings, white-grey-green beating furiously an invitation
Will you? Fiat. Who knew it could
lead to this?
Like the mother who sees in the brow
of her child the strickeness of people who have traversed gardens and fields
and hilltops and heard thorn bushes speak with scarce more eloquence than these
thorns as they strike the veins of the Eternal Word.
Like the mother whose grief speaks
secret joy because she alone knows the Truth: That her Son is dying for all,
for her, for his tormentors, for these thieves.
See
how the Cross of Christ stands revealed as the tree of life
How do we approach the cross?
Do we approach the cross like Joseph
of Arimathea?
There is blood in the crook of my arm
This is the thought of Joseph of
Arimathea
His blood is in the crook of my
arm
It smells of iron, of metal
It is strangely sticky
And now I am unclean for the Passover
Unclean through the blood of the only
source of healing, cleanliness
Like Joseph do we approach knowing
that the old order has passed away, that the very law is passed over?
That our sins are passed over.
See
how the Cross of Christ stands revealed as the tree of life
Do we fear what this cross means for
our future, for our past, for our lives of sin even as we embrace it, acknowledge
it?
Do we fear for ourselves as we
approach the cross?
Perhaps we approach the cross like
John?
Eager to prove our worth, our
steadfastness, our trust
Or like Peter, not at all
Or like the women full of tears for a
passion that is more ours than his?
Or like Nicodemus with his
preposterous hundred pounds of tribute spices, the gift of the un-committed,
the shame of the unconvinced who come to Him only under cover of darkness
Or like ourselves
Men and women in need of embracing
its wood, seeing in its wood our featly to one who
Though he was in the form of God
Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be held on to.
Sometime we can get caught up in the very
dourness of the cross that we lose sight of the larger picture.
And yet, see how the Cross of Christ stands
revealed as the tree of life, for the cross is a conduit, a means, a necessary
means but only a means.
What is the end?
Joy – Real, true, eternal, lasting Joy
Tonight as we contemplate the cross, as we stand
here in the beginning of Lent, I am reminded of the poem of Emily Dickinson:
After great pain a
formal feeling comes--
The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
And yesterday--or centuries before?
The
feet, mechanical, go round
A wooden way
Of ground, or air, or ought,
Regardless grown,
A quartz contentment, like a stone.
This
is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
Image Source
_4.jpg)
