Through one man, sin entered the world and through another it was destroyed. Where death dwelt came life, because the same God who knows us so personally, so intimately, that He knows every single strand of hair upon our head is the same who has taken each and every one of our individual sins and nailed them to a cross with Himself, making an instrument of torture and execution a fountain of grace.

This is why the cross is no longer nor meant to be a symbol of fear, a burden too heavy to bear, because its power does not kill the soul, as Jesus warns as the only fear we are to have, but rather strengthens it, testing the very depths of our love, because it has itself become a demonstration and a symbol of the greatest love, that of our God, becoming man so that He could stretch out His arms to embrace every single one of us.

In fact, this is why Jeremiah, in our first reading, is not scared of persecution, of embracing that cross he was given, of being betrayed by his very friends, watching him closely for the slightest misstep, because his confidence is in that same cross that Jesus embraced, and let fall upon His shoulders, for our sake. It was Padre Pio, one intimately familiar with the cross, who puts it beautifully, he says: “The Cross will not crush you; if its weight makes you stagger, its power will also sustain you.”

And, yet, if it gets too heavy and feels like the weight of the world is literally upon our shoulders, that is when the cross is the most powerful because it is changing us and shaping us; one of the greatest mysteries and one of the hardest realities to endure. I know I have shared this before, but it one of those things that I heard in my life that put something like this in perspective.

It was a deacon, and he was teaching us at an Institute for priestly formation, and he said something that I will never forget and made the cross more real than it had ever been in my life. He said: “If it feels like God is killing you, it is because He is.” When we scream out “God, your killing me,” he says, that is exactly what He is doing. He is destroying us in order to dwell within us, so that in the words of St. Paul: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me.”

And, yet, even in the midst of that, God does not abandon us, does not leave us to our own merits, for if the Father knows when a sparrow falls, how much more He must know about us.

And, believe it or not, and what these readings convey is this gift of the cross. A strange way of understanding it, to be sure, but it reveals a great mystery and intimacy that can be found in this same cross, beyond our comprehension, as a symbol of love and sacrifice, a symbol of the greatest evil and the greatest good,

And as Christians, (as students) with our hearts, in the words of St. Alphonsus Ligouri, “nailed to the cross,” we imitate His love and experience His pain, knowing that, (our greatest learning comes from what many saints call the “school of the cross,” and of which the late John Paul II beautifully conveyed: “The Cross of Christ is truly the outstanding school of love; indeed, the very “well-spring” of love. For, though our learning began in a classroom it is strengthened by our prayers.) This is why, in the end, in the beautiful words of St. Paul, from our second reading today: “The gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.”