Still a stumbling block

The two major Christological errors of the day concern the cross. The first, from the Right, argues that the Gospel provides a plan of personal fulfillment, the pursuit of which will bring earthly rewards. Called the "health and wealth Gospel" or "crossless Christianity," it stipulates that Jesus did all the sacrificing, so it's safe for us to pray and grow rich. Its most famous proponent is televangelist Joel Osteen. The second error, from the Left, cannot reconcile love with the violence of the crucifixion. This denial of the atonement and the salvific nature of the cross is popular in Catholic academic circles, and its most notorious advocate is probably Xavier University's Ken Overberg, S.J. In yesterday's Angelus address, Pope Benedict XVI succinctly refutes both.

It is evident that the Master and the disciple follow two opposed ways of thinking. Peter, according to a human logic, is convinced that God would never allow his Son to end his mission dying on the cross. Jesus, on the contrary, knows that the Father, in his great love for men, sent him to give his life for them, and if this means the passion and the cross, it is right that such should happen.

On the other hand, he knows that the resurrection will be the last word. Peter’s protest, though spoken in good faith and out of sincere love of the Master, sounds to Jesus like temptation, an invitation to save himself, while it is only in losing his life that his life will be returned to him eternally for all of us.

If to save us the Son of God had to suffer and die crucified, it certainly was not because of a cruel design of the heavenly Father. The cause of it is the gravity of the sickness of which he must cure us: an evil so serious and deadly that it will require all of his blood. In fact, it is with his death and resurrection that Jesus defeated sin and death, reestablishing the lordship of God.

But the battle is not over: Evil exists and resists in every generation, even in our own. What are the horrors of war, violence visited on the innocent, the misery and injustice that persecutes the weak, if not the opposition of evil to the Kingdom of God? And how does one respond to such evil if not with the unarmed love that defeats hatred, life that does not fear death? This is the mysterious power that Jesus used at the cost of not being understood and of being abandoned by many of his followers.