The cross is central to our lives as Catholics

Father Brian Christensen
Homily from the Televised Mass, NewsCenter1
Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 4, 2022

“Which one of you wishing to construct a tower?”

This really got my attention as I prayed this week, because as pastor at the Cathedral of Our Lady Perpetual Help in Rapid City, we’re undertaking a major construction project right now. We’re increasing our capacity for welcoming people into a new parish hall, St. Joseph Hall, by 11,000 square feet. The whole place is torn up right now. It’s a mess. It’s a mess, and I still have to raise money to do this. I still have to raise money to do this. So, the fear of wondering, ‘Will I be able to finish this? Will we be able to finish this?’ Then I hear Jesus kind of admonishing us, ‘Would you begin something that you knew you couldn’t finish?’

It seems to me that life and oftentimes we are faced with this great challenge. But what does Jesus getting at, especially in some of the other challenging statements that he makes to us in the Gospel today. You can’t follow me. You can’t be my disciple unless you hate your mother and your father, your wife or your children, brothers and sisters, your own life. You can’t be my disciple unless you renounce all of your possessions. Jesus is being very, very direct and very, very clear.

At the heart and center of Jesus teachings is this phrase, “whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.”

It’s about the cross. The cross is central to our lives as Catholics. We wear it around our necks we have in our churches. We have it front and center in our homes. So many places are ordained or decorated with crosses, because that mystery of the cross reveals something about what Jesus wishes to share with us.

Discipleship means to learn. Right? The disciple learned from the teacher. Jesus is our teacher. What does he want to teach us? He wants us to teach us what fullness of life means and what it looks like, and what we can experience. He said, “I came that you might have life and have it to the full or have it more abundantly.”

And that life is in relationship is Jesus. He says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

Fullness of life comes through Jesus, so we have to learn from him what it means to be full of life. It means be full of love. Now, everyone who follows Jesus knows where Jesus takes you. He’s truth in advertising. Every time. Where does Jesus take us? He takes us to Calvary. Jesus takes us to the cross, because the cross is the way of ultimate love. No greater love does one have than to lay down his life for his friends and you, you are my friends.

Jesus wants to teach us that pathway to authentic human love. It goes by the way of the cross. Self-sacrificing. As Saint Francis is quoted, “it’s better to give than receive. It is in dying we that we’re born to eternal life.”

Jesus wants to share the fullness of love and life with us. This passes through the cross.

And what about the projects that we set out on, and what we want to accomplish. They have to be done with him. I can’t bear my cross, I can’t take up that cross except without him, and I can’t know the fullness of love without him. And what his statement about family members and my own life? I have to put him first above all things, including my possessions and my relationships.

Jesus is number one. He leads us to the fullness of life. He leads us to the fullness of love. Love leads to the resurrection and eternal life.