I thank you for representing Christ as dead on the cross, because I am generally tired of Resurrectifixes.
As you will see here so am I!
Thanks for all of the positive comments and Praise God. Been a long road to come up with design. 54 years to be exact. I can’t agree more when it comes to diluting our image of the Christ Crucified. I don’t want to post long drawn out posting but I feel the need to post this since it was mentioned.
“When we journey without the cross, when we build without the cross, and when we confess a Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord: we are worldly . . . I would like for us all, after these days of grace, to have courage, precisely the courage, to walk in the presence of the Lord’s presence . . . to build the Church upon the blood of the Lord, which is poured out on the cross; and to confess the only glory there is: Christ crucified.” - Pope Francis
When a Catholic church I attended once put the resurrected Christ above the altar, with only a smaller Crucifix present, it crushed my heart. It’s not that I don’t want to focus on the resurrection—it’s just that I can’t get there without the Crucifix being front and center in the Church, in my daily life, in my soul. When a depiction of the resurrected Christ replaces Christ on the cross, our great ship with our Lord and Master at the helm will begin to lose its way. Without the crucified Christ, we become worldly, trying to shape our lives the way we think they should be, making heaven what we want it to be. In the end, Christ’s blood dries up, and so do we. If we skip over Christ crucified straight to Christ resurrected, we lose ourselves in what only appears to be joy and happiness. Our reality as Catholics is suffering into final joy. And we ain’t there yet.
Let’s ponder the resurrection at the foot of the Crucifix. It’s where we learn to embrace true love. His love is what gets us to heaven. The Crucifix is the only porthole home for us. This is where we must embrace suffering, accepting it as the best thing for each of us.
You can find everything you need to know about happiness and joy at the foot of the Crucifix, looking up. The peace that the crucified Christ can bring when we come to Him for strength in our suffering and our joy can replace every pill ever made, every drink ever drank, and every new-age psychiatrist that ever lived. It’s not a secret. Without loss, we gain nothing. Some may say to themselves, But I have had no suffering—I am perfectly okay, perfectly happy.
A priest once responded to that, “It ain’t over yet!”
There can be no happiness without the crucified Christ. This is why Catholic churches worldwide need to stick with the crucified Christ front and center. When we allow suffering to become our friend, this friend becomes Jesus. When we embrace suffering, Jesus embraces us.
I once had a dog named Honey Bee. When I was six years old, I thought she was the most beautiful German shepherd in the world. We were inseparable. Then one morning, I woke up, and she was gone. My mother said she had gone to a farm because she would be happier there. I was so heartbroken that I still shed tears as I write this, 49 years later.
Then I suffered an even greater loss. I was eight years old when my father woke me up to tell me my mother had gone to heaven. God had taken her home. A farm may have sounded better, but I was no longer six. Once again, loss crushed me.
Many of us have faced such losses; many of us are going through loss right now. We have to know that Jesus is right by our side mourning with us, embracing us. With Him we can get back up.
Why did Jesus have to die? Why do we have to die? Why do we have suffering and pain?
The answers I have received make perfect sense to me. God knows our hearts, and He knows what we need as fallen people to discover His love and His home for us. He gave us an expiration date that is the gateway to a new life. Our Lord has passed through that gate, too. Stand below the Crucifix, look up, and there is our proof on the Cross. That’s love.
