584. September 14, Exaltation of Holy Cross (III)

Meditations no. 513 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Joy always accompanies the true Cross of Christ.

Sing, my tongue, the Saviour’s glory; / Tell his triumph far and wide; / Tell aloud the famous story / Of his body crucified; / How upon the cross a Victim, / Vanquishing in death, He died. The Church’s liturgy breaks out in songs of praise for the holy Cross. Tree which solely wast found worthy / Earth’s great victim to sustain / Harbour from the raging tempest, / Ark, that saved the world again, / Tree with sacred blood anointed / Of the Lamb for sinners slain.

Today we too sing the glory of the Cross, the wood on which the King of the angels triumphed, who cleansed our wounds with his Blood. The holy Cross is the only path to reach Jesus. Therefore, since we love our Lord with our whole heart, we also love his Cross, and in union with Him, lovingly and joyfully, we nail ourselves to the Cross, with faith and with hope.

At times our encounter with the Cross may come about abruptly, suddenly, and require from us, with the help of grace, an heroic acceptance of God’s will. But this is not ordinarily the case. Our vocation leads us to take up Christ’s Cross in countless, small daily realities, without any fanfare, in a natural way. Our union with the Cross grows gradually, as along an inclined plane, without our even realizing it at times.

Ours is an encounter repeated countless times, which we accept calmly, joyfully: Is that what you want Lord?… Then it’s what I want also! By our willing acceptance, there comes a moment when, without the noise of words, Christ lets us share more fully in his passion and death, accepting the sincere and radical offering we made to him by our dedication. Each of us becomes more deeply aware of the occasions when God is asking more of me.

The encounter with the Cross is always unmistakable. These are the unmistakable signs of the true Cross of Christ: serenity, a deep feeling of peace, a love which is ready for any sacrifice, a great effectiveness which wells from Christ’s own wounded side. And always-and very evidently-cheerfulness: a cheerfulness which comes from knowing that those who truly give themselves are beside the Cross, and therefore beside our Lord.

Our Father taught us to love the Cross by his teaching and example, and passed on this love to us as one of his most precious legacies. Every year I usually write on the first page of the Ordo that I use, in laetitia, nulla dies sine Cruce! I do so to encourage myself to always bear our Lord’s burden gracefully, with good humour and cheerfulness-even though it so often means going against the grain. For the Cross is not sorrowful, nor unpleasant, nor bitter. It’s the holy wood where Jesus Christ triumphs. And on it we too triumph, when we joyfully receive what he sends us. When we receive the Cross lovingly, it brings to our life an unmistakable sign of predilection: joy and effectiveness in our service to God and souls.

Our joy on the Cross is compatible with pain and suffering.

The Cross is a joyful encounter with Christ, though one inevitably marked by suffering. But this suffering doesn’t crush or terrify us; rather it purifies, cleanses, ennobles, inflames, and is compatible with the deepest joy of the human heart. Christ, by opening his arms on the wood of the cross, reconciled forever suffering and joy, which until that moment had been so opposed.

We Christians can’t be soft and comfort-seeking. Suffering and the Cross are inevitable on this earth, our Father said. And he wrote: Love has certain standard features. Sometimes we speak of love as if it were an impulse to self-satisfaction or a mere means to selfish fulfilment of one’s own personality. But that’s not love. True love means going out of oneself, giving oneself. Love brings joy, but a joy whose roots are in the shape of a cross. As long as we are on earth and have not yet arrived at the fullness of the future life, we can never have true love without sacrifice and pain. This pain becomes sweet and lovable; it is a source of interior joy. But it is authentic suffering, for it involves overcoming one’s own selfishness and taking Love as the rule of each and everything we do.

Our path on earth is never lacking in difficulties and setbacks. But everything becomes easy to bear when we truly love God. Then our dedication is not a burden that weighs on us but a joyful and hope-filled affirmation. Since we are moved by love, we accept tiredness with serene patience and joy. But our joy is not the jingling of foolish laughter. It is something deep, substantial, which does not exclude the reality of the suffering that God often permits.

At times our own imagination lies at the source of what makes us suffer. These sufferings are often subjective. Each one has the ones that he wants. Whoever rests in God has few, since, even when they are real, he accepts God’s will, asks for light to overcome them, and doesn’t lose his peace. The best solution is to abandon oneself in God’s hands and be actively concerned about others. Then our joy will return with new strength, as the supernatural fruit of our dedication.

When our suffering is objective-physical pain, tiredness, real setbacks-we may find it hard to smile and look cheerful. But a serious face can hide a joy with supernatural roots, an interior joy that comes from being on the Cross, savouring in the depths of one’s soul God our Father’s loving will, accepting it with self-sacrifice. Always be serene and strong in the face of setbacks, if they come, in the face of what people call failure. Success or failure is a question of interior life. Success means to receive Christ’s cross calmly, with our arms outstretched. The Cross is a throne for us, just as it is for Jesus. It is the height of love, the height of redemptive effectiveness, in order to lead souls to God.

We should embrace and love the Cross that God offers us.

Today in our oratories the bare wooden cross is covered with green leaves and red flowers to remind us that peace and joy are the fruit of the Cross, that faithfulness in suffering is the only path for us. I will never stop stressing this. In order to be united to Christ in the midst of our earthly occupations, we must generously and wholeheartedly embrace the Cross.

Today is a good day to examine if we are embracing the Cross joyfully. You have to decide once again, my child, our Father tells each one of us, to joyfully take up the Cross, stepping over obstacles with a smile on your lips, with a light in your soul, with the happiness of someone who knows he is ipse Christus… .

I tell Jesus who presides hidden in the tabernacle: our Jesus, you have always been our Love of loves. I ask you never to give us a crown of roses, but rather a crown of thorns, to make us sharers in your sweet Cross. May we never stray from our path out of fear of the difficulties. We don’t want to fail to take up the Cross; we want to carry it gladly on our shoulders. We don’t ever want to stray from this path that is divine, because it is yours.

For us, my children, the Cross is a place of rest. Open your arms and put yourselves on those wooden crosses in our Centres. There is no crucified One on those crosses, because we have to nail ourselves there, without complaining, without fear, without calling ourselves victims. Christ is the only Victim. If we embrace the Cross lovingly, we will be united to Christ, whose five wounds lie open on the Wood.

Jesus, look at my children. Do you see them? These sons of mine, Lord, are in the palm of your wounded hand, in that hand which is the hand of a sower. Press them tightly! Squeeze out all their earthly wretchedness! May they truly leave behind their boat and nets! May they be purified and enkindled, drenched in your Blood. And then, cast them far and wide, with a hunger for the harvest, for a sowing that is each day more fruitful, out of love for You. For this we need the protection of your Mother, our Mother holy Mary, and the protection of the holy guardian angels… .

Do you want to make the necessary resolutions, my son, to always accept lovingly Christ’s Cross, to embrace dedication and sacrifice, to abandon anything that is not Christ’s, to begin to truly be a contemplative soul? Cry out to our Lord, without the noise of words but with a cry that reaches both the tabernacle and heaven: Jesus, I want to follow you in everything, to embrace your Cross, to give myself. I want to be the contemplative soul you seek in your children in Opus Dei, in order to enkindle the world with a clean love, to bring happiness to all mankind by truly drawing them to God.

Our desire to embrace the Cross leads us to faithfully fulfill our regular mortifications and to joyfully receive the unexpected ones, which perhaps are harder to bear because we weren’t counting on them.

We end with words from our Father: My children, in finishing your prayer, ask our Lady that we may lovingly accept the Cross of her Son in our life. My Mother, teach us to open our arms on the Cross, to embrace the Cross and love Christ on it serenely. Help us to place it at the summit of all human activities, so that no one will be an enemy of Christ’s Cross.