Sunday after the Exaltation of the Cross; Holy Great-Martyr Eustathius and those with him (276-82); Holy Martyrs and Confessors for the Faith, the Grand Prince Michael, and His Nobleman Theodore, Wonderworkers of Chernihiv (1245)
Galatians 2:16-20; Mark 8:34-9:1
Read Galatians 2:16-20
Have you ever had the sickening feeling that you are going the wrong way when driving or walking somewhere? I suppose this happens less often now with our GPS enabled phone maps, but I’m not ashamed to admit that it still happens to me on occasion. Next thing you know you are doing the math trying to figure out how late you are going to be, based on how long you’ve gone down the wrong path. The one thing that never crosses your mind though is the idea that maybe if you just kept going down the path you would arrive there. You know without being told that the only way to arrive at your destination is to admit you went the wrong way and turn around. In fact, the quicker you do that, and backtrack, the quicker you are going to get where you are supposed to be headed.
St. Paul tells us something similar today in his Epistle to the Galatians. If you go back to building what you already tore down, you are acting in a foolish way. If you have given your life to Christ and then decide to take it back for yourself through living as though His sacrifice for you means nothing, you are transgressing. In fact, our identification with Christ is so deep that we come to realize that our lives are not our own, but Christ’s who lives in us.
What is it that keeps us on this path and not chasing down a path of our own liking or choosing? The Cross. If the cross of suffering for the sake of authentic love is absent from your life, you may have gone down the wrong path. This Sunday meditate on the relationships that you have with your family, friends and loved ones. Can you find the crosses that you must carry for love of them? How do you escape these crosses? Remember that there is no love without pain. When we truly embrace the Cross, we can say with St. Paul that it is not we who live, but Christ who lives in us!