Friday, March 31, 2017

Parable and Conscience, Meditation March 31


Glorious Cross  March 31

(The Crosier) tries to follow Christ in his Paschal Mystery (Profile of the Congolese Crosier).

The clearest and most disturbing revelation of the Cross is that goodness is reborn in the world through suffering.  The Scriptures announce this dynamic in Genesis 3:15.  Here, for the first time, we hear the Good News that good triumphs over evil, but at a great price:  I will put a struggle between you (the serpent, symbol of evil) and the woman (symbol of life), between her descendants and yours.  He will crush your head (humanity will be victorious over the forces of evil) and you (the serpent) will lie in wait for his heel (the tragic snake bite to the heel of the victor will cause his death).  This is the image of a man walking vulnerably in his bare feet, encountering a deadly serpent and killing it at the cost of his own life.  This is the image of Christ crucified, the Victim-Savior.  It is the biblical affirmation that goodness in the world is reborn through suffering.  To embrace the Paschal Mystery means to participate in the same dynamic.  The Christian is a person ready to suffer at the hands of evil so that others may live.  The Christian has the same sacrificial love as Christ, which allowed him to endure even to death the attack of the forces of evil so that others could be delivered.  Goodness is always born in the world by suffering, life always comes through death, the Cross is always the cost of Resurrection.  Scripture teaches us that this is the way of God.  There is no other path to the restoration of goodness in our world.

The wife of the sorcerer does not leave him when he is chased from the village.  (Nande)

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