The throne of God

Today's readings: Ezekiel 33, 7-9; Romans 13, 8-10; Matthew 18, 15-20.

Today's readings: Numbers 21, 4-9; Philippians 2, 6-11; John 3, 13-17.

Every year on September 14, the Church celebrates the feast of the exaltation of the Cross which today, being a Sunday, takes priority over the ordinary Sunday cycle. Christ's crucifixion, paradoxical as it may sound, is the centre of what we celebrate and what we believe. So from time to time it needs revisiting.

Though on the level of doctrine we see God great, miraculous, and strong, we often experience of Him His silence, patience, and His 'impotence' in the face of evil and suffering. There is an entire tradition in the history of mysticism that takes off from the darkness of God, seeking his presence in his absence. God is a desert to be entered and loved, never an object to be grasped and understood.

The Cross on Calvary was only the executioner's instrument of death. In the first centuries of Christianity, it became the sure point of reference which gave many Christians the strength to become martyrs. In the Constantinian Church, it was turned into a sign of victory and of a triumphant and militant Christianity.

Today, after the Holocaust, and for so many suffering peoples throughout the world, it stands for the one and only response Jesus offers his followers in the face of life's burdens and restlessness.

Christ crucified in his days was scandal for the Jews and foolishness for pagans. For a culture today centred on the self and on instant gratification, Christ's story continues along the same lines. On the Cross, the self is dead and the dawn is to be waited for. The Cross is Jesus' alternative response to evil and suffering which otherwise would lead to rebellion or passive and false resignation, or to a sort of determinism. Suffering at times is waiting impatiently for the dawn, when the night seems endless.

On the Cross, Jesus is impotent, the Father remains silent, and that silence seems too tolerant and scandalous. It strengthened the strong and weakened the weak.

It put God, apparently, on the side of the strong. This is the crude reality of humanity as experienced daily by many. It seems to belie not only God's existence, but any idea of his loving and merciful presence. People today, particularly the crucified peoples, as Sobrino would say, ask the question: 'Where is God?'

For so long, theology was more concerned with God's identity, entering into endless philosophical and theological disquisitions to define adequately the divinity. Today theology is more concerned with the whereabouts of God in the conviction that God continues to tell his story through the lives of people.

The Cross is a symbol of evil, of the suffering of the world, and of the terrible and crude reality of the absolute majority of those inhabiting the globe. But as always, that continues to be the silent majority, stripped of all power just as Jesus was when crucified.

As long as abuse and violence continue to be the order of the day, as long as drug dealers and pimps continue with business as usual, as long as pride and arrogance continue to be virtues, our world continues to perpetuate its calvaries and crucifixions. But suffering in the life of Jesus turned out to be a mystery. Not in the sense of being something incomprehensible, but because it is a sacrament, it opens a window in our existence which provides glimpses of glory and reconciliation.

Today's feast will continue to make sense as long as we continue witnessing daily what the crucifixion of humanity in reality is, with the new forms of boat people coming to our shores of hope and finding instead death and detention, as long as we continue to hear of increasing numbers of battered wives, abused children, raped environments, which all are re-enactments of the crucifixion, of God denied and love betrayed?

As long as the world continues to prefer the night to the day, we continue to suffer the consequences of evil without the hope of redemption.

Then the night will seem endless. And the words of Elie Wiesel in Night will continue to make a lot of sense: "Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust".