Our freedom needs Christ´s cross

THIS is, of course, a Christian view about freedom. We can have other takes on the same subject, but if we have to closely follow our Christian faith, this is what we would get. Our freedom needs the cross of Christ. Not just any other cross, which we can also invent, but the very cross of Christ.

Better said, any cross will actually do, since the cross can come to us in many forms. The only condition is that it be identified with the cross of Christ, or borne together with Christ. That would make our cross Christ´s cross also.

Christ embracing his cross is actually Christ embracing all crosses that can come our way, because that is precisely why he came. St. Paul expresses this truth in this way: ¨For our sake, he (the Father) made him (Christ) to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.¨ (2 Cor 5,21)

The necessity of the cross in our life can readily be gleaned by that famous line of our Lord: ¨If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.¨ (Mt 16,24) We need to digest these divine and saving words very well, assimilate them and make them the operative principle of our daily life.

Christ´s death on the cross, which our Lord has been predicting, and therefore, must have been in the mind of God from all eternity, is a necessary ingredient in the over-all divine plan for our creation, which includes our redemption.

Let´s never forget that our creation is a matter of our whole existence, which in our case starts in time and continues indefinitely or eternally because of the spiritual dimension of our nature that is also given, by God´s will, a supernatural end. It´s not just putting us into existence. It includes keeping us in existence.

While this work of creation is in the mind of God from all eternity, insofar as we are concerned, that work of creation has to develop in time and space and in stages. Besides, that work of creation, while initiated by God without us, cannot be completed without us. It requires our cooperation in time.

To top it all, the work of our creation will have its fullness in the coming of Christ who came to redeem us through the cross. But insofar as we are concerned, we have to cooperate in the completion of our creation by following Christ through the cross, which now involves the work of the Holy Spirit. He is the one who brings Christ alive in us through time.

It´s good to have a full picture of our creation so we can have a good understanding of our life´s meaning and purpose. I know that many of us are still kind of groping in the dark in this regard, and because of that condition we become vulnerable to fascinating ideas and doctrines that actually reduces if not violates the true character of our life.

Insofar as our freedom is concerned, since it is the very gift that makes us image and likeness of God and can able us with his grace to become children of his, participating in his very own life, we have to realize that it is what precisely needs the cross of Christ.

This gift of freedom that can raise us to be Godlike or plunge us into evil needs the proper grounding and mooring that can only be supplied by the cross of Christ. Otherwise, it can readily intoxicate us and lead us to our own perdition. This happened with Adam and Eve, and continues to happen to us if we are not with Christ´s cross.

We have to understand Christ´s cross as the symbol of all our sinfulness, the abuse of our freedom, that Christ took as his own, and by dying to it following the will of his Father, Christ converts it into a vehicle of our redemption, of the completion or perfection of our creation.

This beautiful truth of our Christian faith is expressed in the following liturgical prayer, a eucharistic preface, which says: ¨You decreed that man should be saved through the wood of the cross. The tree of man´s defeat became his tree of victory. Where life was lost, there life has been restored through Christ our Lord.¨

We need to revisit these words often to recover our proper Christian bearing as we go through the exhilarating and suspenseful drama of our earthly life.