The Way of the Cross by Robert P. Waznack, S.S.

There’s something about the passion and death of Jesus that is still appealing to many people in our time. Despite the rocky political turmoil in the Holy Land, as in the past on this Good Friday, under the watchful eyes of hordes of policemen, pilgrims will carry their crosses along the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem. In the Philippines, a few years ago, despite the disapproval of the Catholic bishops, a crowd of 20,000 watched six people nailed to crosses. In some countries, pilgrims marched to the cross while beating themselves with whips. In Washington, DC, not long ago, Catholic pilgrims carrying crosses down Connecticut Avenue during rush hour were booed and insulted by passing motorists for slowing traffic. These pilgrims were celebrating an ancient Christian tradition, the adoration of the cross. That tradition is found at the heart of Good Friday’s liturgy: “This is the wood of the cross, on which hung the Savior of the world. Come, let us worship!” But I sometimes wonder why we seem more passionate and graphic in our observance of the passion and death of Jesus than of his resurrection. Why is it that in today’s Easter newspaper and television clips the images we will see will not be of people celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, but Easter egg rolls and new spring fashions?

Is it the media’s fault? Some critics have observed that violence, war, and destruction so flood our society that movies, TV news producers, and newspaper reporters are more eager to communicate celebrations of death rather than of life.

Or is it the churches’ fault? Is it because today’s preachers are more vocal about sin and death than about the proclamation of new life and the good news of the risen Lord? Whatever the reason, the church’s liturgy offers us a more balanced and life-giving response. The image of the risen Lord in our Easter liturgies doesn’t deny the passion and death of Jesus. Peter preaches boldly of how “they killed him . . . hanging him on a tree.”

Paul proclaims: “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed.” And the risen Lord still bears his wounds. But they are victory wounds, scars from a battle won by the Savior. The people in the Easter stories are much like many of us today. At first they are more willing to celebrate death than life, more overcome by cynicism than faith, more concerned about the rituals of death than the possibilities offered to us by the living God who raised Jesus from the dead.

Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome come to the tomb of Jesus draped in black, prepared to see a corpse. Instead, they find the stone rolled back and see an angel who smells sweeter than all their perfumed oils. The angel is God’s messenger, not an angel of death but an angel of life.

They come to the tomb looking for Jesus of Nazareth and leave with the story of the risen Lord for all the world. They come in their traditional role of anointing women and leave the tomb in the radical role of apostles to the apostles. They come to the tomb slowly, cautiously, filled with troublesome thoughts, like, “Who will roll back the stone for us?” They leave the tomb running, casting all caution to the wind, proclaiming the good news that Jesus has been raised from the dead. All of the resurrection stories are like this. They are stories of believers who at first want to cling to the empty tomb, to the old yeast which never rises. But in all the biblical stories of this Easter season, God tells us not to stay at the tomb with an old dreary way of looking at life with sighs and fears.

Jesus is not among the dead. Jesus does not belong to the past. The Easter angel tells the women not to cry at the tomb because Jesus isn’t there. He is in Galilee. In other words, Jesus invites his followers to find him in the world, in our families, in our neighborhoods, in every place where people gather, for the risen Lord is there.

The message of our Easter liturgy is radically different from the message of our times. It challenges us not to a morbid fascination with death and violence, but to live the kind of life that Jesus won for us. It is the Easter life where life is always chosen over death; where sin is forgiven and forgotten; where the making of peace is always more important than the making of war; where new beginnings are possible despite our addictions and our past.

We are believers who venerate, even wear, the cross of Jesus. We are also called to venerate, even wear, the risen life of the Christ.

Read other articles of Spiritual Enlightenment in the April 2001 edition of The Charismatics or return to the main menu by clicking here