The theme of the cross is a very diverse and also quite profound subject, everything depends on the attitude one wants to address.
Sometimes we also find the cross as a simple theory and perhaps as a theme of the liturgy, subtracting its absolute value as a reality. Just as I write these lines, I do not only seek to make a theological or biblical dissertation of the cross; rather, I want to address this issue more than a topic but as a reality. In other words, in a testimony that should lead us to question ourselves about the reality of the cross in our lives, in our families, in our churches and congregations.
The cross should not become just a banner or a flag that we wield to mark the side in which we can find ourselves. On the other hand, if I want the cross to be life, be the reality not as something painful, but as something renovating.
We believe in most cases that the cross is only pain and suffering, it is not to deny this dimension, but we can not always pigeonhole it in these two dimensions, because the cross is also hope … it is renewal … it is life … yes. It is life because, although we see in it death, pain and desolation, it is also the principle of life and above all the renewal of everything created. That is why seeing the cross today has to move us to make it live and make it visible as the renewal that we have today in being a new creation.
Arriving at the meeting point of a God who becomes human and that humanity takes meaning and takes strength at the root of the cross as that renewal that leads us to look at God in his eyes and recognize him as our Father Yahweh who loved us and He loves us in the person of his Messiah Jesus his son. That is why when I see a cross I realize that it is not only a sign but also an experience and it is not a theological or academic experience but rather a human experience of the redeeming messianism and restorer of the cross as path and as life.
This is how the cross has to become the gospel of the understanding of human reality, a reality where every day we realize that we lose the meaning of life, but on the cross we rediscover it, to reassess, but above all we rehumanize realizing that love has no limits, much less understands reasons not to surrender so that it is abundant and overflows in hope, peace and justice.
It is transcending the sign and the symbol and turning it into the fact that God is immanent in human events, leading us to see that today we are free and filled with a renewing hope … it is to return to the new creation where love, Forgiveness and service are the values that sustain this creation that must transform and liberate.
When you look at a cross, do not think only of pain or suffering but of the hope that God in the person of Jesus gave us back and restored our Father and Son unity in unconditional and clean love of any fold.
