A video appears in our in-boxes every so often, showing several people bent over with the exertion of carrying their crosses. One person continually asks God to shorten his cross, cuts down the cross himself, thanks God, and walks off whistling with his short cross.
Finally, they all reach a gulf, which all the others pass over by laying their crosses over the gap and using them as bridges. Tragically, the one with the shortened cross can not pass over. The video ends with a quote from GK Chesterton, “Christianity has not so much been tried and found wanting as it has been found difficult and left untried.”
Too often, we forget the obvious and unwelcome truth that we can’t rise from the dead if we haven’t died first! There are at least two aspects of this.
First, we need to recognize that when we do something outside of God (even if it wins us a Nobel Peace Prize!) we are “the walking dead” because we have cut ourselves off from Life Himself. So, we all NEED to rise from the dead because we’re all dead in one way or another.
Second, and ironically,we have to put to death the “dead” part of ourselves, precisely by accepting our crosses and walking not wherever our own desires lead us, but to Golgotha to be crucified with Christ. If we do this, we will have truly tried Christianity and found in this very dying our Resurrected Lord!
with love in Christ,
Mother Melania and the community of Holy Assumption Monastery