I had a doctor once — a very good doctor, qualified to practice both western and eastern medicine — who, knowing I was a Catholic sister, commented to me one day that she wished Christians would focus less on the cross and adopt a more life-giving outlook. I was so taken aback that I didn’t respond too well or too coherently, just mumbling something about how Christians believed that the cross did lead to life.
That brief conversation reminded me how foolish the mystery of the cross appears to people who have not experienced its power. As St. Paul says,
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. . . .For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (1 Corinthians 1:18, 25)
In the cross of Jesus Christ we encounter God’s merciful love toward us. In the spectacle of One stripped and hung to die we find life. In the total self-giving of Jesus we behold the power and beauty of God.
The cross undoubtedly looks foolish to those who hold society’s values. And what is more, we ourselves must be willing to appear foolish — which we do when we proclaim Christ crucified (1 Cor. 1:23), when we take up our cross to follow Jesus, and when we cry out with Paul:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:19-20)