![]() Christ on the Cross by Orazio Borgianni HE BORE OUR PRIDE IN HIS BODY ON THE CROSS by Raniero Cantalamessa The cross is the
tomb which absorbs all human pride:"Come thus far; I
said, and no farther: here your proud waves shall
break” (Job 38:11). The waves of human pride break
against the rock of Calvary and they can go no
further. The wall God erected against them is too
high and the abyss he dug before them too deep. 'We
must realize that our former selves have been
crucified with him to destroy this sinful body'
(Romans 6:6). The body of pride -- for this is the
sin par excellence, the sin that gives rise to all
other sins. 'He was bearing our faults in his own
body on the cross' (1 Peter 2:24). He bore our pride
in his body.
But what concerns us in all
this? Where is the 'gospel', the good and joyful
news? It is that Jesus humbled himself also for
me, in my place. 'If one man has died for all,
then all have died' (2 Corinthians 5:14); one has
humbled himself for all, therefore all have
humbled themselves. Jesus on the cross is the new
Adam obeying for all. He is the head, the
beginning of a new mankind. He acts in the name of
all and for the benefit of all. As 'by one man's
obedience many will be made righteous' (Romans
5:19), by one man's humility, many will be
made humble. Pride, like disobedience, is
no longer part of us. It is part of the Old Adam.
It has become old-fashioned. The new thing now is
humility, which is full of hope because it opens
up a new existence based on giving, love and
solidarity and no longer on competitiveness,
social climbing and taking advantage of one
another. 'The old creation has gone, and now the
new one is here' (2 Corinthians 5:17). Humility is
one of these marvelous new things. ...I must give Christ 'the
sinful body of my pride', so that he can destroy
it de facto just as he destroyed it by right once
and for all on the cross. When I was a boy, the
people of my region used to light a bonfire in the
country at nightfall on the eve of certain feasts
which could be seen over the hills. Each family
would bring some wood and vine branches to keep
the fire going while, around it, the rosary would
be recited. Something similar must take place here
this evening in preparation for the great feast of
Easter. Each one of us should throw, in spirit,
his load of pride, vanity, self-sufficiency,
presumption, haughtiness into the great furnace of
Christ's passion. We must imitate the saints in heaven as they adore the Lamb, for this is the model for our adoration here on earth. Revelation tells us the saints approach the throne in procession and fall down before him who is seated and they 'threw down their crowns in front of the throne' (Revelation 4:10). They cast the real crowns of their martyrdom, and we cast the false crown with which we have crowned ourselves. We must 'nail all feelings of pride to the cross' (St Augustine, On Christian Doctrine 2,7,9). On the cross Jesus did not just reveal or practice humility; he created it too. True Christian humility consists in participating in Christ's inner state on the cross. St Paul says, 'In your minds you must be the same as Jesus Christ' (Phil. 2:5); the same mind and not a similar one. Apart from this, many other things can be taken for humility which are really either natural inclination or timidness, or a liking for understatement, or simply common sense and intelligence, when they are not a refined form of pride. Once we have put on Christ's
humility, it will be easier, among other things,
to work for Christian unity, for unity and peace
naturally follow humility. This is also true
in families. Marriage starts with an act of
humility. A young man who falls in love and
who on his knees, as was once the custom, asks a
girl to marry him, makes the most radical act of
humility in his life. He begs and it is as
if he were saying, 'Give me yourself. Alone,
I am not sufficient to myself, I need you!'
We could say that God created humankind male and
female to help them to be humble, not to be
haughty and self-sufficient, and to discover the
blessing of depending on someone who loves
you. He inscribed humility in our very
flesh. But, unfortunately, pride too often
takes over again and the person we love has to pay
for the initial need we had of him or her.
Then a dreadful wall of pride rises between the
two partners and their incommunicability
extinguishes all joy. This evening, Christian
spouses are also invited to place all resentment
at the foot of the cross, to be reconciled to one
another, embracing each other for the sake of
Christ who, on this day on the cross, 'killed the
hostility' (Ephesians 2:16).
Raniero Cantalamessa OFM Cap. is the preacher to the Papal Household. This is excerpted from his book, The Power of the Cross, (c) 1994 and 1996, published by Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, London |