Letter for the year
The cross of Taizé
At Christmas we celebrated a God who is close to us, who out of love became man and shared our existence. Today we remember that Jesus went to the end of this road: he was betrayed, arrested, sentenced and tortured. He died as the lowest of the low.
Jesus took the side of the weak and the poor. At first sight this is a scandal or utter madness. By giving his life on the cross, he chose the last place; he accepted the shame of failure. He took upon himself the weight of suffering, hatred and death, in order to liberate us. In this way he inscribed God’s yes in the depths of the human condition. Even when abused by others, Jesus did not withdraw that yes from human beings. It was his mission; he performed it and he paid the price.
On the cross, Jesus opened his arms to gather all humanity and all creation into God’s love. He is the manifestation of God’s goodness for every human being. In order to reconcile humanity with God, "Jesus emptied himself, taking the condition of a slave and becoming like us… obedient unto death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:5-11).
Jesus inaugurated the New Covenant, a new communion with God. It is a kind of exchange: he takes upon himself what separates humanity from God, he assumes the destiny of each person, and in return he gives us his life. The descent of God in Christ through the incarnation and extreme humiliation of the cross will be a source of wonder and new life for all time. Already in the second century, Irenaeus of Lyons went so far as to say: "Because of his infinite love, Christ became what we are, in order to make us fully what he is."
At that hour when Jesus bore on his shoulders the whole of humanity, he did not forget the pain of those closest to him. He saw Mary, his mother, standing nearby, and asked John, the disciple whom he loved in a special way, to take care of her from then on. (John 19:26-27) So, very humbly, under the Cross the Church was born.
He also saw around him those who persecuted him. At that decisive moment, he asked God to give them forgiveness: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." (Luke 23:34) God’s forgiveness is boundless; it will remain forever a fountain springing up.
On the cross, Christ shared everything with us, even the silence of God: in response to his suffering, there was only a great silence. He experienced what it meant to feel far away from God, abandoned. Yet, at the heart of this abandonment, he borrowed the words of the psalmist and exclaimed: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) Thus, even this abandonment became part of the dialogue of love between him and his Father.
And so his cry of distress was transformed. There is one reality that no one was able to take away from him: the confidence that he is loved by God, and that by giving his life he communicated that love. Then his lips could whisper, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." (Luke 23:46) And his last breath, in the greatest pain, was simultaneously the outpouring of God’s love.
The apostle Peter loved Jesus, but he struggled to accept him as a poor messiah. Being a disciple of a humiliated messiah became so unbearable that, after Jesus’ arrest, he eventually repudiated him. Then Jesus, in the hands of soldiers, looked at him with love and showed him that he did not withdraw his trust (Luke 22:61). Instead, he would later entrust to him the small newborn Church. And Peter would testify, with the other disciples, that no, the cross is not the last word.
The event of the cross is beyond our comprehension, but in celebrating it we grasp more and more the unprecedented hope that it offers. That hope is not a vague optimism. Putting our trust in Christ, dead and risen, opens our hearts to deal lucidly with difficult situations. In a personal communion with him, Christ communicates new energy to us.
I think of a young man whom I sometimes meet in Taizé. He has an incurable disease that is progressing. He suffers terribly. Already many opportunities for a full life have disappeared. And yet the look in his eyes and his behavior remain surprisingly open. One day he said to me, "Now I know what it means to trust. Previously I did not need to, but now I do." That young man transmits a kind of reflection, very humble but real, of the mystery of the cross. If he could only realize how, by his attitude, he communicates hope to many others.
At Taizé, not only on Good Friday, but every Friday throughout the year, at the end of evening prayer we place on the floor the icon of the cross which is reproduced here. All those who wish may approach it, put their foreheads on the wood of the cross and, by doing so, entrust to Christ their own burdens and the burdens of those entrusted to them.
That Friday evening prayer can unite to Christ’s way of the cross all those who bear a heavy cross in their own lives: those who suffer in soul or body, the sick, those who had to leave their country, the victims of injustices of all sorts.
God understands all the languages of our intercessions—French, German, English, Korean, Swahili… But he also understands the language of our body. If we are not able to pray with words, we can express our trust by coming up to the cross. Let us dare to make this gesture of entrusting everything to Christ, both ourselves and others!
It is worthwhile for us to gather together around the cross so that the paschal mystery may become more and more the fundamental mystery of our lives. And Christ takes upon himself what is too heavy for us. He tells us in the Gospel: "Come to me, you who are weary and overburdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28)