Carrying our own cross and the weight of history

 ‘whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me’ (Matt 10:38)

Matthew 10:37-42 (Year A: Third Sunday after Trinity 2^nd July 2017)

‘On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, The emblem of suff’ring and shame, And I love that old cross where the Dearest and Best, For a world of lost sinners was slain.’

So goes the old hymn.  ‘Carrying your cross’, or, simply ‘my cross’ was a familiar expression when I was growing up. And, of course, crucifixes, were everywhere from the little red light burning under a family portrait of the Sacred Heart to the centre piece above the blackboard at school to the space above the entrance to a hospital ward.  From the signing of the cross on your foreheads at baptism to the signing of the cross shortly before we die the Cross has a central and symbolic place. That it is ‘symbolic’ does not mean that it is, somehow, not real. Symbols connect us to real things. And suffering is very real for everyone at some stage in life.

What does it mean to carry one’s cross as a disciple of Jesus? In the first place, it means to accept the reality of suffering in this moment, in this situation and with these circumstances. In the second place, it means loving beyond the wound of suffering to a place of compassion in the midst of suffering (some refer to ‘love your suffering’, whereas, I prefer the expression ‘to love out of a place of suffering’).  In the third place, carrying our cross means to see and experience the sufferings of others. We may think that we can carry other people’s crosses. That might be true in specific cases. However, more often, we can another’s cross only indirectly by being compassion for someone in suffering. The parent can only be present and all listening to a child or young adult who is in deep suffering. The doctor, nurse, priest, teacher, counsellor can only offer their limited help in keeping with their mandate or skills (in any case they have to ‘go home’ eventually after their shift).

Welcome for one another complements the carrying of the cross. If we are to truly love others including those different to us by virtue of race, religion or other characteristics we must welcome them as they are and not as we would wish them to be. Welcome is a difficult idea and can rail against our assumptions and defences. Welcoming another does not necessarily mean abandoning our own principles or beliefs. Rather, it means listening to, acknowledging, learning from and communicating with another human being different to us but sharing the same ancestry as human beings planted on this fragile earth for a time.  Welcome founded on love is the basis of Christian mission and witness.  Unless we can welcome one another in love – and this includes in some way sharing the cross of others – we are not extending the welcome of Christ through us to others: we are stopping that welcome and the light and the love that goes with it.

What are we to make of those words (Matt 10:37):

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

The evangelist, Luke, goes even further (14:26):

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

The key word is not ‘hate’ or even ‘love more’ (and by implication to ‘love less’). What is central to this passage which must be read in both a historical as well as a larger literary biblical context is the idea of uncompromising discipleship. Rather than an ‘either or’ we should think of discipleship as a ‘both and’ where we are planted and how God finds us in our present status and binding commitments and relationships of life. It may be that hard choices have to be made when a relationship is broken and beyond mending despite years of honest and sustained effort. We must be mindful of the often tragic and traumatic context in which these sayings and experiences of the primitive Christian community were set. Christians – who were Jews – were literally thrown out of synagogues and worse. Families were broken up and communities were split down the middle. Sadly, these realities were carried forward into the new Christian community where up to recent times, Christian sisters and brothers in the Church established by Christ excommunicated, hounded and excluded each other..

It is not that long ago, for example, when Irish Government ministers lined the streets outside Saint Patricks Cathedral at the funeral of the first President of Ireland in 1949, himself an Anglican and an Irish cultural nationalist. On pain of ‘serious sin’ Government Ministers were prohibited by the rules of the Roman Catholic Church, at the time, from entering the building of a ‘heretical’ ecclesial community.  As if making contact with the gentiles and some form of idolatry, they were forbidden to ‘defile themselves’. Saint Patrick cried. (Only one Roman Catholic acted otherwise: one, Noel Brown, T.D.).

It was not until even more recent times the religious liberties of married couples were respected in regards to the conscientious upbringing of children. Much harm and upset was caused by these cruel regulations and departures from the spirit of Christian love and truth. In the interests of balance it must be pointed out that the established State Church following the application of the reformation from England on Irish soil was seen, correctly, as the representative of an alien and oppressive power which was fully complicit in the denial of religious and civic liberties for the great majority of Irish Christians who remained loyal to Rome. That said, it must be remembered that the unholy alliance of State and Church did not begin with the Reformation. There was the matter of the imposition of a very Roman-centric Norman church from the 12^th century onwards not to mention the ‘conversion’ of Rome many centuries before.

To be faithful to the Gospel is not easy. To be a disciple of Christ means to carry the cross where we are, as we are and how God chooses.  God has a way of undoing our best plans and showing us a way through suffering to a better place. In the history of this divided country religion has played its own role in tearing families and peoples apart. God is calling many, today, to carry the cross of history by letting go of attachments and by ceasing to insist on our own way. The call to conversion is as pressing today as it was when Saint Patrick walked on this island.