We attach great value to relics of the holy cross…but there is a cross
which is better than these particles most venerable though they
are…it is everything we meet with in this life which annoys and is
opposed to us. The pagan or the philosopher sees in these things
only effects springing from natural causes; but the Christian, who
is enlightened by faith, sees in them the hand of God, who disposes,
ordains, or permits everything for our greater good, to render us
like to His divine Son, Whose whole life was nothing but a cross
and a martyrdom; to form us to the solid virtues of patience, of
resignation, and of humility; lastly, to make us acquire more
honor and glory in eternity. Now all trials, looked at in this light,
are the true crosses which Jesus Christ recommends to us, holy
crosses, precious crosses which are found everywhere. Sometimes
we find them in our bodies: they are sufferings and infirmities, cold
and heat: sometimes we find them in our hearts: they are the death
of someone who is near and dear to us, a reverse of fortune which
obliges us to descend from the rank we occupy; they are the
association with difficult and disagreeable characters; they are the
thousand desires we cannot satisfy, the thousand unpleasant
circumstances we meet with. Here we find them outside ourselves:
they are a humiliation which is inflicted on us, a want of consideration,
the preference of another to ourselves, a calumny or a raillery of
which we are the object; they are persecutions coming to us from
persons who do not bear good will toward us, who do not understand
us, who hate us and seek to do us evil. There again we find them within
us: they are temptations, scruples, doubts which fatigue us, sometimes
even pure imagination; we fancy things that do not exist in reality, and
we turn them into cruel trials. “In a word,” says the author of the Imitation,
“the cross is everywhere, you cannot escape it, above you and below you,
outside you and inside you, you will everywhere find the cross” (II. Imit. Xii. 4).
Happy he who receives it and bears it as he ought, “looking on Jesus, the author
and finisher of faith, Who having joy set before Him endured the cross”
(Heb. Xii. 2).
We ought to love our personal crosses, because the cross of Jesus has raised
them to the distinguished honor of being the most efficacious means of
perfection, and the warrant of our eternal hopes. Patience, which endures the
cross, says St. James, is perfection, and solid perfection, because it has been
proved in the crucible (James i. 4). For a moment of light suffering, an immense
weight of glory (2 Cor. Iv. 17); after trial, the crown of life (James i. 12). It is one
of the Beatitudes proclaimed by Jesus Christ: “Blessed are they that suffer”
(Matt. v. 10) It is a special grace which God sends to His best friends; it places
them on the royal road to heaven. Therefore the Gospel says, Receive crosses
not only with patience but with gladness (Matt. v. 12). “With Christ I am nailed
to the cross” (Gal. ii. 19). Let us make the resolution first, to address frequently
fervent aspirations of love to Jesus suffering and dying for us; secondly, to perform
all our actions from a motive of love for Him, and to give, with this
object in view, all the perfection of which we are capable to these actions. “Christ
died for all; that they who live may not now live to themselves, but unto Him Who died
for them and rose again.” (2 Cor. V. 15).
By Rev. Hamon, taken from, Lift Up Your Hearts, by Fr. Lasance, Imprimatur 1926
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