Making a Start with Our Cross

Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. Christ is showing us the way of a Christian. It is helpful to back up a few verses from today's passage to realize the context in which Christ said these words. He had just given the first indications of how he would die: that he would suffer, be rejected by his own people, and killed. Hearing these words, St. Peter rebuked him, privately.

Then Christ, turning and seeing the other disciples, openly rebuked these statements from Peter. And it's not because Peter spoke against him, but because Peter was speaking against this core understanding of what it is to live the Christian life. Christ had to suffer. And if we will follow him, we, too, will suffer.

The apostles, not long after his death, quite literally followed after him, being beaten, just like him: and it says they rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer for the name. In our current situation, this is quite unlikely for most of us, but these passages also bring to mind what the Lord said elsewhere: in this world you will have trouble. And we all have trouble.

Trouble with work: stress and exhaustion. Trouble with health. Trouble with loneliness. Trouble with family. Or more likely than not, trouble with relationships, in general. And our periods of trouble are precisely where the Cross comes in.

To put it in a slightly different context, to help us understand what it looks like to take up our cross, it is helpful to look at the three stages along the trail of life that St Silouan spoke of. The first is the acquisition of grace; that is when we first come into communion with God. The second, is when grace is lost. And the third, is when grace returns or is acquired again through toil and struggle.

Everybody loses that initial grace. And, as he taught, most of us only reach the third stage, and reacquire grace, near the end of our life. The reality is: most of our life is spent in that second stage, struggling to reacquire grace. As St Silouan explained it, that grace is reacquired through toil and struggle. That is exactly what it means to take up our cross and follow Christ.

Every struggle that comes our way, every toil, every suffering, every pain…all of them can be offered up to God as a sacrifice. And just like in the liturgy, when we give him bread and wine, and he gives back his body and blood, so too, here: we give him our suffering, and he gives back his grace to sustain us.

But judging from what St. Silouan taught, even though we have received grace, we still feel like we are in a desert. We don't perceive that grace. That does not mean God didn't answer our prayer; it only means we are not likely to see or feel the grace we have received…also, just like the liturgy.

There are a multitude of ways that we can offer these struggles up to God, but the first and simplest way is to make the sign of the Cross. As if to say, "I don't know what prayer to say; I don't know how to respond; I don't know who to talk to; I don't know how or when I will ever get out of this. All I know to do is to offer it to God. So, I make the sign of the cross, I accept it as a struggle for my salvation, and I give it to you, O Lord."

We don't have to know all the answers. All we need to do is make a start: make the sign of the cross as a way to "commend ourselves, and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God".

Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.