Cross, the symbol of victory

Once a husband had a quarrel with his wife. He went to church and when he came home, he suddenly lifted his wife and carried her around. The startled wife said, "Why did you do that? Did the priest tell you to be romantic?

- FR. BEL SAN LUIS, SVD

"No! He told me to carry my cross!" he replied. (It could be the other way around. But the husband is a heavier cross to carry).

For many the cross is the symbol of shame and defeat. But for Christ and Christians, it is a symbol of victory. The Church highlights this paradox when it designated the 24th Sunday as a feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.

It is through the cross that God manifested his greatest love for mankind. That is why John the evangelist writes in this Sunday gospel: "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him" (Jn. 3,16).

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The late Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said, "The reason of His coming was to allow all of the sins of the world to be visited upon him as if he himself were guilty."

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