The Cross as Revealing God's Unconditional Love
by Fr Ron Rolheiser
2002-02-17
A number of years ago, a young man came to me
because he was in crisis: He had been having an affair with his girlfriend and
she had become pregnant. For a variety of reasons, marriage was impossible. The
pregnancy would have an irrevocable impact on a series of lives, his
girlfriend's, his own, their families', not to mention the child that would be
born.
He was a sensitive person and knew that he had been irresponsible. He made no
attempt to rationalize or to deflect blame from himself. He recognized that he
had done wrong and that through his irresponsibility a certain innocence had
been lost, trust had been betrayed, various lives had been permanently
disrupted, and he would now live in a certain brokenness. This troubled him
deeply.
He ended his story on a note of despair: "I was irresponsible and this has,
forever, hurt some people because even God can't unscramble an egg!" For him, it
now seemed, there would always be a certain skeleton in the closet, a past ghost
to haunt his happiness.
Even God can't unscramble an egg! What a statement! And how true, except for one
thing: The cross of Jesus reveals that we can live, and live happily and
healthily, beyond any egg we have ever scrambled. That is the central message of
the cross. How does the cross tell us this?
Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, used to say that we understand
the make-up of things best when we see them lying in pieces, shattered. In the
brokenness we see the underlying structure. That is also true of love and faith.
We see how they are made up when we see them fractured. Jesus' death shows us
this. At the second he died, scripture says, the "curtain veil in the temple
was torn from top to bottom." The curtain veil, as we know, separated the people
in the temple from seeing what went on in the holy of holies, it represented the
veil between God and ourselves. The cross of Jesus tears apart that veil and
lets us see inside the holy of holies, the heart of God. And what do we see
there? Unfathomable love, unfathomable forgiveness, a compassion and tenderness
beyond understanding. In the cross, God tells us: "You can do this to me--- and
I will still love you!"
I remember another young man who shared with me how he once so badly betrayed
all that he believed in that he decided to commit suicide. Setting out to kill
himself, he decided, first, to stop in a church and say some final prayers. He
entered a church and sat down. The only thing lit up in that darkened church was
a crucifix on the front wall. He looked at the cross and, in a second of sheer
grace, understood what it meant.
Here are his words: "I looked at the cross and I understood: I was in hell
and God hadn't stopped loving me for one second. I saw that God loves me, no
matter what. I'm not proud of what I did and it will always be part of me, but I
can live beyond it, and be happy, knowing God's love and strength are always
with me, even when I betray them." Unaware that he was doing it, he was
tenderly fingering a cross he was wearing around his neck as he shared this.
An elderly nun, whom I much love and respect, is fond of saying: "I'm a loved
sinner!" The secret to spiritual health is to acknowledge, in the roots of our
souls, both parts of that equation: We are sinners without any need to
rationalize or excuse ourselves, even as we have the sure knowledge that God
loves us, deeply and irrevocably, in our weakness. The cross gives us that
assurance by telling us, precisely, that God doesn't stop loving us, even for
one second, irrespective of weakness.
The cross of Christ is rich reality. Among other things, it tells us how God
loves and redeems us even when we are unfaithful and our lives are broken.
It is not surprising that hundreds of millions of people, young and old, wear a
cross in some form. These crosses, like the meaning of the cross itself, have an
infinite variety of shapes and sparkles. From delicately cut, golden ear-rings,
chosen to match an expensive evening dress, to rough, crude wooden crosses slung
casually over a denim shirt, the cross of Jesus is everywhere evident. We see it
on hillsides, on church spires, in cemeteries, and most everywhere where
anything special, love or tragedy, has happened. Rightly so. The cross is the
ultimate symbol of love. It shows what love is, what love costs, and what love
does for us.
Most important of all, it shows us that God never stops loving us even for a
second, no matter what we do, and that we can live, and live happily, beyond any
egg we have ever scrambled.