Recently I attended the blessing of a new cross at Sacred Heart College in Lower Hutt. The cross was created by Hastings artist Paul Isaacson and blessed by Bishop John Dew. The experience left me pondering again this most central of all Christian symbols.
It must seem to others who are not Christian (and even for some who are) to be a strange and disturbing image to have at the heart of one’s religious faith. It is an image that for the Muslim world is linked to the Crusades and centuries of hostility between Muslims and Christians. For most within the Christian Tradition it expresses the heart of our faith.
Because the cross is so familiar there is a risk that we domesticate it to the point where we no longer really see it. It is just part of the furniture of our churches and homes. As Bishop John mentioned in his homily for many in our world it is just a piece of jewellery. The gift of the artist is often to awaken and invite us to look again at the familiar and see it anew. The new cross at Sacred Heart College does this by the way it hints at the ribs of Jesus and the nature of the shadow that its three dimensional structure creates. It evoked for me disturbing images of people starving in concentration camps or caught in war or famine. This connection jolted me into a fresh awareness of the horror of what people do to one another. We don’t have to look hard to see that we still live in a crucifying world. The cross, in the words of Johannes Metz, keeps alive the dangerous memory of suffering. It tells us that mission is an unfinished story.
Pondering this I saw a connection with something I read recently in Karen Armstrong’s book “A Short History of Myth”. She says that for our ancestors myth and ritual were reminders that”life was fragile and impermanent, that survival and creativity required a dedicated struggle and often called for sacrifice”. In difficult times myth tapped people into sources of divine energy that sustained them. It provided a way to confront death so that people were enabled to live fearlessly and find the courage to change and grow.
Our modern world is not comfortable with myth. For many its main meaning is a story that is not true. We look to science for facts and often ignore the kind of truth that myth offers. One consequence of this can be that we don’t deal well with death. Science can tell us about what we need to do to prolong life but it cannot help us to face death in a way that will enable us to live fearlessly. That was the gift myth offered our ancestors. It is what the cross offers to us. This story says that death is not the final word. What looks like defeat and failure is in fact the door to new life.
During this month of November we remember and pray for the dead. We trust that in Christ they live a new life in God and that our connection with them while changed is not broken. In our remembering them and the new life that has come through the cross we finding courage and hope to continue the unfinished task that is mission.
Fr Patrick O'Shea lives at St Columban's, Lower Hutt, New Zealand.