Christ's Journey Through the Cross

Jesus’s life on Earth was a journey through the Cross.  Jesus’s life was a journey to redeem humanity from its sins and to right the wrongs committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  The Cross was a waypoint in Jesus’s journey; it was not the end point. 

 
Jesus’s mission was prophesied in the Old Testament, most notably by the Psalmist and the prophet Isaiah.  They foretold his life and they foretold his suffering and death and resurrection.  

 
In Psalm 22:2, the Psalmist declares, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”    Jesus will echo these words as he hangs in anguish from the wood of the Cross. 

 
Isaiah prophesied “But he was pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity.  He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed”  (53:5).  In that same chapter, Isaiah prophesied further “My servant, the just one, shall justify the many, their iniquity he shall bear” (53:11).  

 
At key moments in his life, Jesus’s mission to die on the Cross for humanity’s sins was foretold and predicted, including by Jesus himself.  When Mary and St. Joseph presented the newborn baby Jesus in the Temple, the prophet Simeon declared to Mary:  “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted (and you yourself a sword will pierce) so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed”  (Luke 2:34-35).  

 
St. John the Baptist also proclaimed Jesus’s role on Earth.  Seeing Jesus, he declared, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (See John 1:29).  By identifying Jesus as “the Lamb of God,” St. John the Baptist is declaring that Jesus will sacrifice himself as a sacrificial offering to God for the sins of humanity in terminology readily apparent to practicing Jews familiar with the Temple sacrifices for sins.  

During his public ministry, Jesus predicted his own death on several occasions.   As recorded in St. Mark’s Gospel, Jesus told his Apostles “The Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days after his death he will rise”  (9:31).   Jesus predicting his death is also recorded in other parts of the Gospels, including Mark 8:31, Matthew 20:17-19, Matthew 17:22-23, Luke 9:21-22 and John 12:23-24.  

 
In the days leading up to his Crucifixion, St. Mary Magdalene prepared him for his impending death by washing his feet with her tears and anointing him with expensive perfumes.  “Mary took a liter of costly perfumed oil made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair; the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil,” recorded St. John in his Gospel (12:3).

 
And then Jesus was arrested, convicted, sentenced, tortured and ultimately murdered on the Cross at Calvary. As St. Luke recorded, “Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’; and when he had said this he breathed his last” (23:46).   He did so to redeem humanity from its sins and open up Heaven for us.

 
Mary Most Blessed accompanied Jesus at many points in his journey through the Cross.  She was there with him at the foot of the Cross as he breathed his last.  

“At the Cross her station keeping,

stood the mournful Mother weeping,

close to her Son to the last.”  --- Stabat Mater

 
Though it was the Jewish religious leaders who arrested Jesus and handed him over to the Romans for execution and the Romans who put him to death, we all share responsibility for his suffering and death because of our own individual and collective sinfulness. 

Jesus’s journey did not end on the Cross. His journey did not stop on the Cross. His journey continued through the Cross.  The Cross and Death could not stop Jesus’s journey.  Sin and Death could put him in the Tomb but they could not hold him there, as he so emphatically demonstrated on Easter Sunday.  “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” wrote St. Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians (15:55).  

 
On the Road to Emmaus after his Resurrection, Jesus instructed two of his disciples on the meaning of what had just occurred in Jerusalem.  “And he said to them, ‘Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’” (Luke 24:25-26).

 
In his First Letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul wrote, “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins” (15:17).

 
In a Homily given during Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on 26 March 2000, Pope St. John Paul said, “The Resurrection of Jesus is the definitive seal of all God’s promises, the birth-place of a new, risen humanity, the pledge of a history marked by the Messianic gifts of peace and spiritual joy.”

 
 Jesus’s journey passes through the Cross; it does not stop there.   And if we take this journey with him, then he will lead us to Heaven.