Cross – the Burden of Love!

Fr. Francis Scaria

When Jesus tells us to take up our daily crosses and follow him, we cannot mistake it for a literal meaning. It would be funny to find every Christian walking on the road with a wooden cross on her/his shoulders. The very adjective ‘daily’ tells us that is about the demands of our everyday life. Cross is the burden of the living out of the proactive love that Jesus propagated.

A mother takes all troubles while she brings up her child with love. She keeps awake when he is sick, she is alert when he learns to walk, she is conscious of his being close to her all the time. She cares for him, bathes him, dresses him up and carries him. She does all these and more out of love for him. She finds joy in the growth of the child. For her the cross is the sum total of the demand of the love for that child. Jesus asks us to love one another as he has loved us. This is very demanding. All that this all embracing love demands in our space and time every day is our daily cross. Our daily cross includes the weight of our responsibilities, demands of relationships, and above all the challenges of being a follower of Jesus in a society which is seemingly hostile.

The Cross is the burden of truthfulness although it is not always convenient. It is the burden of honesty, of sincerity, of duty, of responsibility, of accountability, of hospitality, of loving enemies although it is very demanding, of accepting ourselves however ridiculous we are, of accepting others as they are, of accepting God as he is - without trying to make a puppet God of our liking or trying to prune God to fit our plans, of humility although it is very hard, of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, of making peace, of tolerance - leaving space for other opinions, ways of life, belief system aiming at peaceful co-existence, of suffering, of sickness, of self-renewal and of being free. Thus the Cross is the burden of Christian life in General.