Posted by Kevin Bates When we love someone enough - be it parent, partner, child, friend, we will do anything for them, and as often as not, we don't even count the cost. We are aware of the cost of course, but our main focus is the good of the person we love. In the same way, we pick up our Cross and more than our fair share of the Cross, because we love God, we love God's people and we love God's creation. The whole point of picking up our cross is to express our love for the other, not to prove a point, or to plead for a cause. In point of fact, we may well make a point, or plead a good cause, but again the whole purpose of sacrifice, picking up our Cross, is to reach out in love. When we do this, we are more aware of the person or the purpose of our gift than we are of the cost. This is what Jesus does in the gospels, and is the clear tradition of the Church. when it comes to grappling with some of the moral issues of the day that you mention, the same pricniple applies. We grapple with them in order that God's loving purposes may be accomplished. In the middle of that grappling we can have some great arguments of course because God's loving purposes are often hard to discern when there are complex moral, social, political issues to be considered. As we pick up our Cross with Jesus this Easter, we do so in response to a love that is beyond all our imaginings, and so we do this with glad hearts and hopeful spirits. So I agree with our sense that we choose to pick up our Cross in such a way that humanises rather than demeans life. That is the key principle behind all that we say in the Church regarding any moral issue really. As the Church, it is our mission to sdeek the truth and the best way forward when it comes to all these issues that you allude to. We can be sure that we are doing this with integrity when our purpose is at heart, to enhance and humanise, to celebrate and create, rather than to demean or destroy.
on April 12, 2006, 10:25 am, in reply to "Whose Cross are we Carrying?"
Message modified by board administrator April 12, 2006, 10:27 am
Following your reflections about carrying our Cross Cathy, I'll take a slightly different starting point.
--Previous Message--
: Now that we are in Holy Week, it might be a
: good time to bring up something which has
: long bothered me and which I’m hoping you,
: Kevin, or some-one else “out there” might be
: able to help me sort out. As we are
: particularly conscious of at this time of
: year, a very central part of being a
: disciple of Jesus is our willingness to take
: up our cross and follow him. Over the
: centuries, it seems this has come to mean
: that we accept whatever suffering comes our
: way – we even have the well-worn expression,
: “one’s cross”, meaning one’s particular
: bundle of troubles or difficulties. Yet,
: if you read the Gospels, this doesn’t seem
: to be what Jesus was talking about at all!
: Of course, in the early Church, following
: Jesus could literally mean facing death, as
: Jesus himself did. But even apart from
: this, taking up one’s cross in the Gospel
: sense seems to imply that it is something
: which we take up willingly; it seems to mean
: embracing the difficulties and disadvantages
: that come from living according to the
: values of God’s kingdom, not those of this
: world. I strongly suspect that once
: Christianity became an “official” religion,
: it was used as a tool for keeping people in
: their place, rather than challenging the
: mainstream values which put them in that
: place! In the past, people were encouraged
: to accept a grossly inequitable society on
: the basis that God had supposedly ordered it
: that way and put everyone in their proper
: place. As children, we were taught to
: “offer up” our sufferings (certainly not to
: question them!), and I think there is still
: some of that attitude around.
:
: However, what particularly concerns me
: nowadays is what all this implies for us as
: we grapple with thorny moral issues such as
: euthanasia, abortion, foetal stem cell
: research, etc. The Catholic Church, and some
: other religious bodies, tend to staunchly
: oppose these new developments, although many
: people take issue with the Church’s
: position, since “surely a compassionate God
: doesn’t want people to suffer”. I don’t
: want to go into the rights and wrongs of
: these difficult issues, but I, too, would
: have thought that God doesn’t want people to
: suffer. Does being a Christian – taking up
: one’s cross – mean that we should be more
: willing than other people to embrace
: suffering of any kind? Or should we only
: embrace the sort of suffering that comes
: from devoting our lives to God’s kingdom, to
: opposing whatever dehumanizes people and
: causes suffering? I would have thought the
: latter! If that is what Church leaders are
: intending to convey to us, they need to make
: their position clearer.
:
:
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