Saturday,
September 14, 2010
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
First Reading: Num 21:4-9
Second Reading:
Phil 2:6-11
Gospel Reading: Jn 3:13-17
Jesus said to Nicodemus, “No one has ever gone up to heaven except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man.
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
Yes, God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but may have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world; instead, through him the world is to be saved.”
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
“No pain, no palm; no thorns no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown,” writes William Penn in ‘No Cross, No Crown’. Penn comes close to what Jesus tried to show to his disciples by dying on the cross. Penn’s “no cross, no crown” is a concise encapsulation of Jesus’ marching order to his followers to deny themselves and take up their cross.
Not all people who take up their crosses, however, end up in glory. Suffering is not always synonymous with sacrifice. The former is raw experience of physical, emotional or mental distress at various levels of intensity, while the latter is suffering made sacred by offering it to God. Suffering, in fact, comes from two Latin terms “facere” (to make) and “sacrum” (sacred). Only until suffering becomes sacrifice will it provide one the cross that leads to glory.
Not all sufferings become sacrifice. The sufferings resulting from vices, for example, can hardly be made sacred. Thus, if a student neglects his studies preferring to sit all day at the internet café, the resulting misery cannot be made sacred more so if he still has the chance to abandon the vice. The wage of vice is comeuppance which can hardly be made sacred for being fruit of a poisonous tree, and which can hardly be useful to a person because it carries no seed of final glory.
Merit cannot be derived from sufferings resulting from vice. Sources of merit include those sufferings resulting from abuses of others. The gift of freedom clothes both good and bad people with the mantle of immunity from God’s intervention. God won’t send down fire and brimstone to destroy people who misuse their freedom and in the hope that one day bad people will repent. Meanwhile God grants abundant merits to their victims who after trying non-violent means to parry the oppression are left with no other option but suffer.
“No cross, no crown”, writes William Penn. Go for the right crown, take up the right cross!—Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM. Email: dan.delosangeles@gmail.com. Website: www.frdan.org.
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