“The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross.”

• Paragraph 2015, Catechism of the Catholic Church

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Five years ago, Internet Monk offered a series during Holy Week on the Stations of the Cross as Michael Spencer was struggling through his last days here on earth. I was new to the community and busily writing several of the meditations for the series. As is often the case, when one is in the throes of a project, vision is focused. It is up close and tunneled. I remember having exaggerated mental images at each step and station. In my mind’s eye, I saw rivulets of blood, felt the heat and jostle of the crowds, heard shouts and murmurs and smelled the closely pressed human flesh. I felt the breath go out of me as Jesus fell in the dusty street under the crushing weight of his cross.

Five years later, I sense the panorama, the sweep, the flow and end of the steps and stations. There is blessing and value in both viewpoints. There is a fellowship with Christ that comes in close scrutiny and meditation of the minutest details of his way to the Cross. I was thinking intensely about these things, but Michael, in his last moments, was undoubtedly experiencing fellowship in a way that none of us will until we are dying. Stepping back and looking at the whole, there is also a coming nearer to grasping God’s grand purpose, though always with the dimness and darkness that can’t be overcome without a face-to-face encounter in eternity with the living Christ. No doubt, Michael is experiencing this as well in a most exquisite way … a way that defies description.

“The way of perfection passes by way of the Cross.” This is not something to be understood at glance or even in a whole lifetime. It is layered and shrouded in mystery, something to uncover, bit by never ending bit as we attempt to know the ways of Holy God who has beckoned us through his Son. Part of the meaning seems to be that we, who contemplate the Cross and appropriate the work of it, enter and begin to travel the way of perfection. But strangely, Scripture tells us that the One who hung there was also perfected. We understand our need to be perfected, but the idea that Christ was made more perfect baffles and confuses us. Yet, the writer of Hebrews (2:10) tells us, “ For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect τελειωσαι through suffering … the suffering of the Cross.

It helps to consider this word “ to perfect” or “make perfect” in the original Greek. Τελειόω, the verb form here (and various parts of speech following), is more clearly understood as “to complete, to accomplish, to carry through completely, to finish, to bring to an end, to fulfill.” We can see its theme throughout the gospels and its culminating result on the Cross. There, Christ’s mission on earth and the purpose of his incarnation in time and space, were completed. The Lamb, slain before the foundation of the world cried out in his human flesh, “It is finished” (John 19:30). His saving work was accomplished, carried to completion, brought to an end, finished … τετελεσται.

We, as Christ’s followers and the children God desires for his family, are to be completed as well. He wants us to be the mature sons and daughters in the experience of our lives that he knew us to be in his will, the place of our conception. Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:48, “You, therefore, must be perfect τελειοι, as your heavenly Father is perfect τελειος.” We are the subjects of his mission to save. He has done his completing work and now we are invited to plunge into the living water of his resurrected life and submit ourselves to its purifying, refining effect. The Apostle Paul shares his assurance of this outcome in his letter to the Philippians (1:6), “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion επιτελεσει until the day of Christ Jesus.” By faith, by perseverance, by following hard on the heels of the elder brother the Father has sent to bring us into his house we can safely trust that we will not only be lovingly welcomed, but also conformed to the image of his Son.

It is this following of Christ we prepare for in part when we meditate upon the Stations of the Cross. We are developing a framework within our moral and spiritual imaginations that eventually makes a transference and application into our real life situations and circumstances. Usually, we think of these stations during Holy Week prior to Easter. They remind us of the events of Christ’s Passion and are fruitful meditations for all the ordinary times too. Although only eight of the fourteen are specifically detailed in Scripture, the other six (3, 4, 6, 7, 9 and 13) have traditionally been included over the centuries. But they are more than tradition and pieces of a story to remember. They are daily opportunities, if we are willing, to enter in spirit and stand with Christ as witnesses at his trials and humiliations and beatings, to follow his painful faltering footsteps on the road to Golgotha and ultimately, to wince in horror as the soldiers smash spikes into his flesh. Going deeper, we might experience a more profound union … and feel flashes of his pain, suffer his exhaustion and the weakness of his ebbing life. There is no telling what mysteries God may choose to illuminate and how he will use his Son’s way to the Cross to exert his converting power on our minds, our hearts and our spirits.

Consider also what Jesus said to his disciples. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”(Matthew 16:24 and Luke 9:23). We walk and watch and learn from him at each station and step along the way to his Cross. Our mission, after all, is to also bear crosses … to take up our burdens, our people, our pains, our joys and the sorrows of life God ordains for us in the Body of Christ and to keep following him. Our mission is to continue bringing his kingdom from heaven to earth by offering each living act, even life’s drudgeries and common requirements as spiritual services of worship. We can only do it by his continual outpouring of grace. We can only do it as we see it already done in him. We can only do it as our spiritual imaginations are formed according to the example of Christ.

This is the example Jesus gave us in going the way of the Cross. It wasn’t the high, the glorious or the exalted way as we would wish and as we tend to think we must travel. It was the low, the inglorious and broken way. It is this way, after we have given ourselves over to the searching, desperate meditation of it … a way born from recognition of our staggering spiritual need … that eventually bears its fruit in us. It bears its fruit in boardrooms, bedrooms and schoolrooms … wherever life takes place, wherever we suffer scorn and condemnation, contempt and abuse. It bears its fruit when we are hurting in our bodies, our emotions and our spirits. It bears its fruit when we are abandoned, betrayed and denied. It bears its fruit when we are blind and breathless with sickness, pain and exhaustion. It bears its fruit when we are wiping the faces of our children, our loved ones, our weak ones and our old ones. It bears its fruit when we ourselves are dying. We remember our Savior in these moments and we follow him.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me …” (Galatians 2:19b, 20a). That is really the purpose of meditating on the Stations of the Cross. It is to submit all that we think and do and are into conformity with all that Christ is … until by his Spirit we are taken up into Him. Jesus expressed it this way, “I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly τετελειωμενοι one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me” (John 17:23). We are perfected and completed in communion with him and with his people, the Church. Our lives are the means by which he lives on earth today, the means by which his Kingdom and his love now come, wooing the lost into his perfecting embrace. Let us take up our crosses and follow him.

We adore you, Oh Christ, and we bless you.
Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.