Christian Art | Take Up Your Cross And Follow Jesus | Meditations On The Love Of Jesus Christ
Matthew 16: 24-28 – Week 18 Ordinary Time, Friday (King James Audio Bible KJV, Spoken Word)
24 ¶ Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.
25 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
26 For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?
27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.
28 Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.
Jesus invites us to a life of giving. Jesus declares for the Christian an end to egotism, that hoarding of self as of property which can so restrict our lives, distancing us from God and from our fellow human beings, ultimately from perfect happiness. Our happiness is to be found in the service of God, which is also the service of others. As we give our lives away in this sense, as we deny ourselves, so we grow in community as a Christian people.
We are asked to live the life of the Beatitudes, in particular to identify with those who have little and who experience hardship, with those who are marginalized and live their lives far removed from those who might conventionally be seen to embody worldly success. The riches of the world are potentially a hindrance, where they are seen as an end and not a means to an end, to our ultimate end, God Himself.
Jesus speaks figuratively of the cross we are to carry, while knowing the cross that awaits him. The cross was the imperial Roman death sentence inflicted on the lowest in society. It is a sign of the imperial subjugation, as of the gross and dehumanizing brutality of imperial Rome. Jesus takes this sign and overturns its meaning. For Christians, because of Jesus, the ghastly image of a terrible death becomes the ultimate promise of hope fulfilled, Christ’s throne and the gateway to heaven. By carrying our cross as we follow Jesus, we are refusing the allure of the riches of the world to live in accordance with the higher good. And really, as Jesus tells us, his burden is light.
There were those early Christians who expected the end of the world to come in their lifetimes, interpreting Jesus’ words to mean this. Contrary to this interpretation, we hear Jesus speaking of how his Kingdom will grow and flourish through time, from the most humble of beginnings, to encompass the whole world. It seems Jesus may refer in these verses to his death and resurrection, or to the presence of the Kingdom among Christians, as we welcome Christ into our hearts and as we see our Lord in every other person we encounter. As we ask God for the Kingdom, so the Kingdom is with us, a foretaste of the ultimate goal of our lives, when our relationship with God will be perfected.
Concluding Prayer | Love Revealed By Jesus Christ
Lord Jesus Christ,
who on the cross called the penitent thief into your kingdom,
in faith and trust and confessing our sins
we implore your mercy
that after our death
you will lead us rejoicing through the gates of paradise.
Who live and reign for ever and ever.
King James Audio Bible | Endnotes
What Does It Mean For Christians To Take Up Their Cross And Follow Jesus?
To take up one’s cross means to be willing to endure suffering for the sake of Christ. It means that we must be willing to lay down our own desires, ambitions, and even our lives, for the sake of the Gospel. The cross was an instrument of death and it represents the sacrifice that Jesus made for our sins. When we take up our cross, we are acknowledging the sacrifice that Jesus made for us and we are committing to following him, even if it means suffering and persecution.
This call to discipleship is not an easy one. It requires us to deny ourselves, to put aside our own desires, and to submit to the will of God. In doing so, we are called to love God and to love our neighbours as ourselves. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20: ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’
Many Christians have spoken of the vital importance of taking up one’s cross. In the early Church, Tertullian wrote: ‘The flesh is the hinge of salvation. The flesh is the hinge of salvation. . . . Therefore, the flesh is to be trained to be a minister to the spirit. . . . The flesh must be subdued and brought into subjection, and made a servant of the spirit.’ (On The Resurrection Of The Flesh, 8)
Saint Augustine, in his book The City Of God, wrote: ‘The whole life of a good Christian is a holy desire… But in order that this desire may be fulfilled, we must first take up our cross and follow Him. And what does it mean to take up our cross, but to prepare ourselves for what is good and holy, and to be ready to endure all things for the sake of Christ?’ (The City Of God, Book X, Chapter 2)
In the Protestant tradition, John Calvin wrote: ‘We must be prepared to suffer for Christ, if we desire to be His disciples. For this is the only path that leads to the kingdom of heaven.’ (Institutes Of The Christian Religion, Book III, Chapter 8)
The Catholic Catechism teaches: ‘The disciple of Christ must not only keep the faith and live on it, but also profess it, confidently bear witness to it, and spread it: “All however must be prepared to confess Christ before men and to follow Him along the way of the cross, amidst the persecutions which the Church never lacks.”’ (CCC 1816)
Persecution And Martyrdom Of Christians
Many Christians have taken this call to discipleship to heart and have suffered greatly for the sake of Christ. The early Christian martyrs, for example, were willing to face torture and death rather than deny their faith in Jesus Christ. Saint Polycarp, an early Christian bishop and martyr, is said to have exclaimed, ‘Eighty and six years have I served Him, and He never did me any injury: how then can I blaspheme my King and my Saviour?’ before being burned at the stake for refusing to renounce his faith.
In more recent times, Christians in countries such as China, North Korea, and Sudan have faced persecution and even death for their faith. According to the International Christian Concern, approximately 260 million Christians worldwide currently face high levels of persecution for their faith.
Despite the challenges and suffering that may come with following Jesus, Christians are called to take up their cross and follow. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:7-8: ‘But what things were gain to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.’
Pope Francis has spoken frequently about the need for Christians to embrace a life of sacrifice and service, echoing the call of Jesus to take up one’s cross. In a homily in 2013, he said: ‘We are called to follow Jesus along the way of the cross, carrying our own cross with him. The cross is not a piece of jewelry or an accessory; it is the mystery of God’s love, which brings redemption to the world.’
In another homily in 2018, Pope Francis emphasized the importance of persevering in the face of difficulty, saying: ‘The Christian life is a journey, a pilgrimage, and we must be prepared to walk along the path of the cross. We must be prepared to suffer for the sake of Christ, to endure the hardships of life with faith and courage.’
Pope Benedict XVI also spoke frequently about the call to take up one’s cross and follow Jesus. In a homily in 2007, he said: ‘To take up the cross means to identify oneself with him who was crucified, to become one with him who bore our sins and our sufferings. It means to follow him on the way of love, which is the way of the cross.’
In his book ‘Jesus of Nazareth’, Pope Benedict XVI also reflected on the meaning of taking up one’s cross, saying: ‘Taking up the cross means following Jesus on his path of love, which leads through suffering and death to resurrection. It means being willing to suffer for the sake of love, to bear the burden of the world’s pain and brokenness in solidarity with Christ.’
In this reading, Saint Proclus reflects on the feast of the Epiphany as a revelation that completes and deepens the mystery of Christmas. At Christmas, Jesus Christ is revealed in weakness, as an infant sharing fully in human vulnerability. At Epiphany, and especially in the baptism in the Jordan, Jesus Christ is revealed in his public mission and divine authority. The same Lord who lay in a manger now stands in the waters, sanctifying creation itself [ … ]
We process. Glass exhibition cases, old reliquaries. A forearm here; here a nun’s fingertip. In chapel, at a glance, there are the usual faces. But they all stand to attention. Jonathan breaks from the procession to – fire the organ with oomph and dignity: Ride on! ride on in majesty! The angel-squadrons of the sky look down with sad and wondering eyes to see the approaching sacrifice. When we’ve done the readings, the Arch holds that tree in his hands to deliver the homily. He rocks quietly on his feet, some few seconds, as if balance defeated it. A way you might affect as the Spirit moves… Copying. Then he says: ‘Our palm fronds may seem to us today rather dry. I mean this not in a literal sense, but by the standards of those who originally lined the roadways in order to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem, as they proclaimed Jesus to be the Messiah, who would be clambering up and ripping their palm branches fresh from off the trees. I think perhaps also our faith is somewhat distant from that of the people there on that highroad into Jerusalem, and something of our sense of the meaning has shifted in vividness from what it was then. And of course the expectation of all those many people is markedly different, but in many important respects the same. There are the same essential qualities to all our faith in God, which springs complete from our humanity, and that is one and the same in value for all of us, and time is consistent on this point. So then, let us renew the fullness of Catholic faith, and let us ask the Lord’s blessing as we embark upon our Holy Week. ‘Our Lord enters into Jerusalem in order to refresh us. He is to die in order that we may have life. There is a living reality here, both spiritual and as entangled in the joy of our daily living. We have Ladies’ Day where I grew up. They still have it, and they close the roads off, and little children parade, dressed-up like spring brides. When I was a boy, there was a May Day festival, and there was a May pole on the field, with the people dancing, like Morris dancers might be one way of visualizing this if you’ve never seen it, with their ribbons tied onto the top of the May pole, and they would weave around each other, dressing the pole, which is what we called it. It was like a dance with red and white and blue ribbons all hung off of the top of the May pole, which stood there all year, only like a telegraph pole, but it was concreted in, and then there was a slide, and swings – one baby-swing and two you could have a go at – terrible health and safety but that’s what it was in those days. ‘There was a round-a-bout – we used to run it round and round to try to get it off its central axis. It were rusty as anything and creaked like mad – on concrete. And climb up where it was all greased up at the top. Ruth, who was big as the next four of us, used to sit there sucking on the lollipops we nicked for her from Raddies, and she’d direct matters. We were trying to destroy it, and get it to dislodge from its central axis, and fly away – roll off into that farmer’s field, which he only ever kept for silage, but we never succeeded. There was a car someone had left there so we spent forever smashing that up, until someone who lived in one of the houses there took exception to our doing that, so he put thick grease under the door handles and gave us a right talking to. ‘It would only be a few stands, hot-dogs and things like that. The man selling the hot dogs would have his records on full blast. There’d be a couple of set-up stalls. Air-rifles – that sort of thing. But we all had them, and we all went shooting, of course, if not with twelve bores then with smaller gauge. Or pay a pound – I have no idea how much it was in actual fact then – it might have only been a few pennies – and we’d get all that time smashing up the crockery the man would put up for us to smash on the dressers. That was my particular favourite thing to do at these festivals, by the way, in case you were wondering. You got a little bucket of so many cricket balls. ‘I dread to think what went into those hot dogs. Probably EE rules would forbid it now. But it was a fair mix in those days. A lot of young people then were C of E. We’ve done a lot to hang onto our young people, which is a tremendous encouragement when you consider how things are, while in recent decades the Church of England hasn’t been so successful. People still want it on feast days and what are essentially now civic celebrations. It’s strange to see, though, how all the little stands there people have are run by the police and people like that along those lines. There’s no May pole. That was a sort of faith that ran and ran beneath all the theoreticals of it in the 1960s and the 1970s and into the 1980s. The May pole isn’t there now in the particular place I’m thinking of. Considering May poles were officially suppressed hundreds of years ago – as a part of the protestant reformation. One or two of you are probably thinking I’m remembering things from that time! ‘I should have liked to say that those processionals were so hardwired into us, that even after the last thirty years, when I became a bishop, they are still with us. They were […]
As Jesus walks ahead of his disciples on the road to Jerusalem, the people who follow Jesus are amazed and afraid. This is the response of the people, not merely to a great teacher or to a nice man, but to God among them. So often in the Bible, the response of a person to God or to one of God’s messengers, the angels, is just this: they are amazed and they are afraid. Mark’s Gospel is telling us here that, on his way to his Passion, his brutal death, Jesus is God become man [ … ]
