But more—the Cross as such towers ineluctably over the life of every Christian. Through Christ, suffering has acquired an entirely new meaning. What was merely an inexorable consequence of original sin before Christ has now assumed the character of a fruitful penance and purification—a manifestation of love. Suffering love has redeemed the world. The cross stands forth as the symbol of redemptive and expiatory suffering freely accepted by merciful charity.

No one who is unwilling to take up his cross can truly follow Christ. In the life of every Christian, that cross is there. Not unless he embraces it with eager readiness—perceiving in it the call of God and accepting it as a means of his mortification—can he be transformed in Christ.

To evade the cross is to evade Christ. Whether we try to escape from it in fact, to hide it from our eyes, or to bury it under a layer of shallow pleasures and peripheral interests—it is Christ from whom we thus separate ourselves. “But it behooves us to glory in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ: in whom is out salvation, life, and resurrection: by whom we are saved and delivered,” the Church sings in the Introit of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. Again, in Passion Week: O Crux, ave spes unica, hoc Passionis tempore (“Hail Cross! thou only hope of man, Hail on this holy Passionday!”), Venantius Fortunatus, Vexilla Regis.

Only he who “lives by Christ” can fully bear his cross

Our nature, to be sure, struggles against the cross: we seek to flee from it. Sometimes we achieve this purpose to a degree by keying down our life to a lower standard, and appeasing our desire for happiness with more trivial goods.

If, on the one hand, this success in eschewing the cross can never be but a partial and largely an illusory one, on the other hand it again requires a great deal to experience one’s cross to the full. He alone who “lives by Christ” is able to bear the whole weight of a heavy cross—to endure it integrally; to realize all the suffering it implies. He alone, above all, is able so to cling to it as to make the cross, as it were, carry him. He alone is able to carry it in full inward peace and unity: without recalcitrance or despair, without even the bitterness of emphatic resignation.