Meaning of Personal Cross

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me”(Matthew 16:24).

Jesus said that we must first deny ourselves and then, take up our cross and follow him, carrying our cross.  This is a part of the Gospel reading for the 22^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) – Matthew 16:21-27.

Jesus commanded the disciples to practice self-denial and carry their own cross to follow him, after scolding Peter for trying to stop him from heading to Jerusalem. This episode took place between Peter’s confession of Jesus’ Messianic nature and the Transfiguration.

So, what does this command of Jesus mean?

It seems that self-denial is a necessary condition to carrying our personal cross, in order to follow Jesus. This appears to say that our psychological clinging to ourselves makes it difficult to take up and carry our cross. In other words, it is our ego that can become a impeding factor in taking up and carrying our cross, as Jesus has commanded.

I do not think that anyone would interpret this literally and go to a lumber shop, making a wooden cross to carry, upon reading these words Jesus.

Though this passage evokes an image of Jesus carrying his heavy cross on his way to Golgotha, as in the Stations of the Cross, Jesus was using the word, “cross”, symbolically. With this understanding, we must ask ourselves, what the cross means to us and what is the cross we carry.

In the Bible study group I teach, I asked participants this twin question.

Suffering, sacrifice, victory…

These are some of the answers that came up. All of these make sense.

In regard to suffering and sacrifice, I had to add a bit of note to distinguish salvific suffering from non-salvific suffering and salvific sacrifice from non-salvific sacrifice, to make sure that Jesus’ teaching on self-denial and the cross is not about masochism.  Masochistic suffering and sacrifice simply are destructive and produce nothing meaningful.  These are what Devil tries to drive us into.

Unfortunately, some religious people, especially those with rigid cognitive schemata and those with certain psychopathologies, such as insecurity and narcissism, tend to go through masochistic suffering and sacrifice. In some cases, they practice sadistic suffering and sacrifices, especially when narcissism is evident.  These pathological misunderstanding of self-denial and the cross are often observed in monastic and ascetic religious practice – though not all monasticism and asceticism are pathological.

Just as we must be very careful which spirit we follow, we must exercise full caution as to our understanding of self-denial and the cross, in regard to suffering and sacrifice.

With this caution, I shared an image of the cross as a mother carrying out her pregnancy and delivering her child, enduring sufferings and sacrifices. Having witnessed tragedies during pregnancy and child birth as a hospital chaplain intern, I am convinced that pregnancy and childbirth are fit to an image of the cross that Jesus encourages us to carry.

Though today’s advanced OB/GYN (obstetrics/gynecology)  level of care has reduced many pregnancy-and-childbirth-related deaths, pregnancy and childbirth still come with a certain degree of risk of death – not only for children in their mothers’ wombs but also mothers themselves.

We may wonder why women have been choosing to become pregnant and give birth to their children   - even though pregnancy and childbirth demands a lot of self-sacrifices and come with a risk of death for generations?

To continue human species, as it is an instinct. 

This can be a good answer – if the above question is asked in a biology class. But, I am not teaching biology here.

Psychologically, philosophically, and theologically, it is out of love – self-sacrificing love, namely, agape.  For the sake of a tiny life growing inside of her womb, a psychologically and spiritually healthy woman is willing to sacrifice herself and endure sufferings, because she knows there is joy and meaning in her suffering and sacrifice – even though a risk associated with pregnancy and childbirth could mean her death and/or her child’s death.

A woman, whom I had the privilege of ministering and counseling, told me, “Now, I think I can accept this sad and painful loss as my cross”, after some meaningful pastoral counseling and reflection upon her miscarriage. As she was Catholic, we prayed the Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, following this conversation. Then, she reflected her cross upon the cross that Mary had to carry for being perfectly obedient to God’s will. After the Rosary, she told me with some smile, “After all, if Mary did not go through all that suffering she had to bear for her son’s suffering and death, we would not have Easter to celebrate, right?” She also said that she offered the baby she carried in her womb to the Lord, as well as all the sufferings and self-sacrifices she made during her pregnancy.  I witnessed that the weight of her grief was lightened as she found the meaning of the cross she has been carrying – as she recognize the weight of her cross, though pastoral reflection and counseling.

She also said she still wants to become pregnant again, though she sure does not miss all that throwing up and other sufferings associated with pregnancies. It is because she wants to be a mother. So, she asked me to join her in praying that the Lord will let her share the next new life in her womb more.

Now, God has blessed her and her husband two healthy children. She shares her joy, as well as suffering and sacrifices, of motherhood, with the Lord, as she is grateful.

So, this is one way to understand the cross.

A cross can also symbolize a junction of the divinity and the humanity, where the Holy Spirit meets the human flesh.  It symbolizes where God and the humans meet.

A perfect crossing of the divinity and the humanity began with Mary’s pregnancy and completed with the Cross that Jesus carried and died on.  All of these are in God’s salvific plan.

In discerning meaning of our personal cross to take up and carry it, we can certainly reflect the cross Mary carried with her absolute obedience to God. As Mary’s cross – her suffering and sacrifices – was God’s major salvific plan, bringing the Messiah in the human flesh to this world and let him complete his mission with his Cross in Calvary, this reflection helps us make our personal cross also bear some salvific meaning. For this, we can also think of suffering and sacrifices that women endure during pregnancy and childbirth.

As Mary is symbolically projected in the woman, who cried out in pain and gave birth to a male child, facing further challenges, in Revelation 12, we can connect our own cross to Mary’s cross through this woman’s suffering and sacrifice. After all, Revelation 12 also symbolically indicates that we are the rest of her offspring that Satan declared war against. And, Christ, her first-born son in Revelation 12, is our elder brother. It is him, this elder brother, who now invites us to deny ourselves, take up our personal cross and carry it in order to follow him.

We know Christ’s victory not only over death with the Resurrection but also over Satan from Revelation 19-20. This means that carrying our cross and following him, upon our self-denial will lead us to a victory over Satan.  Realizing this makes our suffering and sacrifice well worth to endure. In other words, denying ourselves, taking up our cross and carrying it is well worth, because it leads us to the ultimate victory, ushering us into the Kingdom of Heaven.

The woman, whom I was given an opportunity to provide pastoral care and counseling, after her miscarriage, regained her hope for a child, because she recognized that her suffering and sacrifices with that pregnancy led to the miscarriage is her cross toward a victory with a child to raise.

After all, a cross is not just a cross. There is so much to a cross.