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Pope Benedict XVI- General Audiences |
General
Audience
On St. Paul and the Cross
"The Risen One Is Always the One Who Has Been Crucified"
H.H. Benedict XVI
October 29, 2008
www.zenit.org
Dear brothers and sisters:
In the personal experience of St. Paul, there is an indisputable fact:
While at the beginning he had been a persecutor of the Christians and
had used violence against them, from the moment of his conversion on the
road to Damascus, he changed to the side of Christ crucified, making him
the reason for his life and the motive for his preaching.
His was an existence entirely consumed by souls (cf. 2 Corinthians
12:15), not in the least serene and protected from snares and
difficulties. In the encounter with Jesus, he had understood the central
significance of the cross: He had understood that Jesus had died and
risen for all and also for [Paul], himself. Both elements were important
-- the universality: Jesus had truly died for everyone; and the
subjectivity: He had died also for me.
On the cross, therefore, the gratuitous and merciful love of God had
been manifested. Paul experienced this love above all in himself (cf.
Galatians 2:20) and from being a sinner, he converted to being a
believer, from persecutor to apostle. Day after day, in his new life, he
experiences that salvation is "grace," that everything descended from
the love of Christ and not from his merits, which in any case, didn't
exist. The "gospel of grace" thus became the only way to understand the
cross, the criteria not only for his new existence, but also the answer
for those who questioned him. Among these were, above all, the Jews who
placed their hope in works and hoped to gain salvation from these; the
Greeks as well, who opposed their human wisdom to the cross; finally,
there were certain heretical groups, who had formed their own idea of
Christianity according to their own model of life.
For St. Paul, the cross has a fundamental priority in the history of
humanity; it represents the principal point of his theology, because to
say cross means to say salvation as grace given to every creature. The
theme of the cross of Christ becomes an essential and primary element in
the preaching of the Apostle: The clearest example of this is regarding
the community of Corinth.
Before a Church where disorders and scandals were present in a worrying
way, where communion was threatened by groups and internal divisions
that compromised the unity of the Body of Christ, Paul presents himself
not with sublime words or wisdom, but with the announcement of Christ,
of Christ crucified. His strength is not persuasive language, but
rather, paradoxically, the weakness and the tremor of one who trusts
only in the "power of God" (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:1-4). The cross, for
everything that it represents and also for the theological message it
contains, is scandal and foolishness. The Apostle affirms this with
impressive strength, which is better to hear with his own words: "The
message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to
us who are being saved it is the power of God. … It was the will of God
through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have
faith. For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim
Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to
Gentiles."
The first Christian communities, whom Paul addressed, knew very well
that Jesus is now risen and alive; the Apostle wants to remind not just
the Corinthians and the Galatians, but all of us, that the Risen One is
always the One who has been crucified. The "scandal" and the
"foolishness" of the cross are precisely in the fact that there, where
there seems to be only failure, sorrow and defeat, precisely there, is
all the power of the limitless love of God, because the cross is the
expression of love and love is the true power that is revealed precisely
in this apparent weakness.
For the Jews, the cross is "skandalon," that is, a trap or stumbling
block: It seems to be an obstacle to the faith of the pious Israelite,
who doesn't manage to find anything similar in sacred Scripture. Paul,
with no small amount of courage, seems to say here that the stakes are
very high: For the Jews, the cross contradicts the very essence of God,
who has manifested himself with prodigious signs. Therefore, to accept
the cross of Christ means to undergo a profound conversion in the way of
relating with God.
If for the Jews the reason to reject the cross is found in revelation,
that is, in fidelity to the God of their fathers, for the Greeks, that
is, the pagans, the criteria for judgment in opposing the cross is
reason. For this latter group, in fact, the cross is blight,
foolishness, literally insipience, that is, food lacking salt;
therefore, more than an error, it is an insult to good sense.
Paul himself on more than one occasion had the bitter experience of the
rejection of the Christian pronouncement judged "insipid," irrelevant,
not even worthy of being taken into consideration on the level of
rational logic. For those who, like the Greeks, sought perfection in the
spirit, in pure thought, it was already unacceptable that God became
man, submerging himself in all the limits of space and time. Therefore
it was decidedly inconceivable to believe that a God could end up on the
cross! And we see how this Greek logic is also the common logic of our
time.
The concept of "apátheia," indifference, as absence of passions in God:
How could it have understood a God made man and defeated, who later on
even had taken up again his body so as to live resurrected? "We should
like to hear you on this some other time" (Acts 17:32), the Athenians
scornfully told Paul, when they heard him speak of the resurrection of
the dead. They believed that perfection was in liberating oneself from
the body, conceived as a prison: How could it not be considered an
aberration to take up again the body? In the ancient culture, there did
not seem to be space for the message of God incarnate. The whole of the
"Jesus of Nazareth" event seemed to be marked by the most total
insipience, and certainly the cross was the most emblematic point of
this.
But, why has St. Paul made precisely of this, of the word of the cross,
the fundamental point of his preaching? The answer is not difficult: The
cross reveals "the power of God" (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:24), which is
different than human power. It reveals in fact his love: "For the
foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God
is stronger than human strength" (ibid., 1:25).
Centuries after Paul, we see that the cross, and not the wisdom that
opposes the cross, has triumphed. The Crucified is wisdom, because he
manifests in truth who God is, that is, the power of love that goes to
the point of the cross to save man. God avails of ways and instruments
that to us appear at first glance as only weakness. The Crucified
reveals, on one hand, the weakness of man, and on the other, the true
power of God, that is, the gratuitousness of love: Precisely this
gratuitousness of love is true wisdom.
St. Paul has experienced this even in his flesh, and he gives us
testimony of this in various passages of his spiritual journey, which
have become essential reference points for every disciple of Jesus: "He
said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect
in weakness'" (2 Corinthians 12:9); and even "God chose the lowly and
despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing
those who are something" (1 Corinthians 1:28). The Apostle identifies
himself to such a degree with Christ that he also, even in the midst of
so many trials, lives in the faith of the Son of God who loved him and
gave himself up for his sins and those of everyone (cf. Galatians 1:4;
2:20). This autobiographical detail of the Apostle is paradigmatic for
all of us.
St. Paul offered an admirable synthesis of the theology of the cross in
the Second Letter to the Corinthians (5:4-21), where everything is
contained in two fundamental affirmations: On one hand, Christ, whom God
has treated as sin on our behalf (verse 21), has died for us (verse 14);
on the other hand, God has reconciled us with himself, not attributing
to us our sins (verses 18-20). By this "ministry of reconciliation" all
slavery has been purchased (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23).
Here it is seen how all of this is relevant for our lives. We also
should enter into this "ministry of reconciliation," which always
implies renouncing one's own superiority and choosing the foolishness of
love. St. Paul has renounced his own life, giving himself totally for
the ministry of reconciliation, of the cross that is salvation for all
of us. And this is what we should also know how to do: We can find our
strength precisely in the humility of love and our wisdom in the
weakness of renunciation to thus enter into the strength of God. We
should build our lives on this true wisdom: To not live for ourselves,
but to live in the faith in this God, about whom all of us can say: "He
loved me and gave himself up for me."
[Translation by ZENIT]
[After his address, the Holy Father greeted the pilgrims in various
languages. In English, he said:]
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
In our continuing catechesis on Saint Paul, we now consider the central
place of the Cross of Jesus Christ in his preaching. Paul’s encounter
with the glorified Lord on the way to Damascus convinced him that Jesus
had died and risen for him and for all. The mystery of the Cross showed
him the power of God’s merciful and saving love. As Paul told the
Corinthians, he came not to preach in lofty words or wisdom, but to
proclaim "Jesus Christ, and him crucified" (cf. I Cor 2:2). The Cross,
which seems a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, is the
revelation of God’s wisdom and strength. As the supreme sign of God’s
love for sinful humanity, the Cross invites us to that true wisdom which
accepts the free gift of God’s merciful and saving love. On the Cross
Christ gave himself up for our sins (cf. Gal 1:4), becoming a sacrifice
of atonement in his own blood (cf. Rom 3:25). For Paul, faith in the
crucified Lord thus calls us to crucify our own flesh with its desires,
in order to share in Christ’s death and resurrection (cf. Gal 5:24). In
accepting the weakness of the Cross, we experience the power of God’s
love for us.
I offer a warm welcome to all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors
present, especially those from Britain and Ireland, Norway, Australia,
Korea, Vietnam and the United States of America. I greet especially the
Delegation of Papal Knights from Great Britain, and the members and
benefactors of the Gregorian University Foundation of New York. Upon you
and your families, I cordially invoke God’s blessings of peace and joy.
© Copyright 2008 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
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