(Gal. 6 : 11–18)
“But God forbid that I should boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.
The Cross divides this world. Christ’s Cross is the very sword He speaks of when He says that He has not come to bring peace, but a sword (Mt. 10:34). By this sword those who reject the Lord are cut off and rejected
Christ’s Cross stands on the border between two worlds: this world which is drowning in sin and vice, and the other world towards which we are headed if we are ready to take upon ourselves the confession of faith and patient, cross-bearing endurance
We make the sign of the Cross on ourselves, showing clearly that we are Christians. By the Cross of Christ we make our choice: either we are with Christ, or with the enemies of Christ’s Cross (Phil. 3:18). We heard the Apostle Paul saying that he considers all things loss (Phil. 3:8) and that he would never boast in anything other than the Cross of Jesus Christ (Gal. 6:14)
We, too, must set all of our standards according to Christ’s Cross and His sacrifice for us. This standard must apply to our entire life, to every step we take and every move we make. We, too, are called to crucify ourselves to the world and to separate ourselves from the world by His Cross
We stand before our Lord who has been humiliated and nailed to the Cross. Behind the Cross is an enormous multitude, legion upon legion of those who hate Christ, those who do not know Him nor accept Him. For them He is truly “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence” (1 Pet. 2:8). They are deaf and their hearts have become hard and icy, and they cannot imagine that the humiliated and tormented Lord will rise in glory and that He will come again, in even greater and ineffable glory, to settle all final accounts with His creation and with those who crucified Him
Yes, truly the Lord is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. The prophet David spoke of this and said that He is the stone which the builders rejected (Ps. 118:22), but then he cried out in a stronger voice that this rejected stone would become the chief cornerstone. “This was the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes” (Mt. 21:42). Unlike the rest of the world, we Christians, accept this Stone, which is our Lord, as our cornerstone and our beacon in our long and difficult journey to Him
The godless builders of this world, the builders of a world that has been stripped of its soul and left cold, reject this Stone and in its place they try to establish their own, stone cold, human reason as the supreme master of the world. “Go from us, Galilean, we are building a tower, that we may reach the heavens and throw You down from Your throne” (Gen. 11:4). And the builders of the “global” world strive to establish their own, demonic law, in place of the Law of God. And they oppose all of God’s commandments, inciting others to do the same. They go against that which the creator established as a natural order of things. The Lord created man and woman, yet they encourage men to mate with men and women with women to fornicate and to do evil things in the eyes f the Lord (Num. 18:22). The Lord commanded men to multiply, yet the builders of this world do everything in their power to destroy and poison both the unborn and the newborn
Ours is a time of death. Our civilization is one of destruction. The satanized mind of men looks for carious ways of sowing death and rooting out life. Before the eyes of us, the “silent majority,” a minority that is possessed by legions of demons screams and unfurls its banner of death, slaying the unborn and the unprotected, and murdering the born with hunger and thirst
We have come very far in this lawlessness and we are hovering on the brink of an abyss. With their endless and aggressive screaming and noise the godless builders of the world have lulled our consciences and are now offering us the devil’s horns instead of candles, so that we are groping in the darkness without God’s light to show us the way. Numbed and powerless we watch as a helpless human being, unable to utter a word or a cry, is slowly killed.* Are they the ones who breathed life into her, that they might rightfully put it out? Did they sow the seed of life into her, that they might pull the plant out? The builders that rejected the Stone (God) by this hideous crime, and have put themselves in the place of God, making themselves as gods
Today, and every day of our life, we stand before the humbled and crucified Lord. We bow down before Him and glorify His holy resurrection. In standing before the Lord we commit ourselves to thinking according to His standards and to measuring every step and every action we take by these standards. It is our duty to know the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16) In standing before the Lord and in making the sign of His cross, we commit ourselves to measuring everything according to His Cross. In doing so, we must bear in mind that the message of the Cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18)
“Do not be conformed to his world,” says St. Paul, “but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Rom. 12:2). And remember: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men” (1 Cor. 1:25)
Apostle Peter also tells us this: “Laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (1. Pet. 2:1-5)
This is in complete agreement and harmony with the words of Apostle Paul: “And my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not be in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. However, we speak wisdom among those who are mature, yet not the wisdom of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:4-8)
- Teresa May Schindler (Terri Schiavo), a brain-damaged American woman depending on life support. At the insistence of her husband Michael, after a lengthy judicial process, the Supreme Court of Florida ordered her feeding tube to be removed. She died of starvation on March 31, 2005. She was murdered.