| The cross of Christ gives life to the human race |
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Death
trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a
highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly,
because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of
itself. Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem
carrying his cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross he summoned
the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it.
Death slew him by means of the body which he had
assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he
conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead
engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was
slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by
the life that is above the nature of man.
Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a
body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so
he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This
chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he
invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strong-room and scattered all
its treasure.
At length he came upon Eve, the mother of all the
living. She was that vineyard whose enclosure her own hands had enabled
death to violate, so that she could taste its fruit; thus the mother of
all the living became the source of death for every living creature. But
in her stead Mary grew up, a new vine in place of the old. Christ, the
new life, dwelt within her. When death, with its customary impudence,
came foraging for her mortal fruit, it encountered its own destruction
in the hidden life that fruit contained. All unsuspecting, it swallowed
him up, and in so doing released life itself and set free a multitude of
men.
He who was also the carpenter’s glorious son set up
his cross above death’s all-consuming jaws, and led the human race into
the dwelling place of life. Since a tree had brought about the downfall
of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of
life. Bitter was the branch that had once been grafted upon that
ancient tree, but sweet the young shoot that has now been grafted in,
the shoot in which we are meant to recognise the Lord whom no creature
can resist.
We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross
to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from
the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you
who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of
life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your
murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but
it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the
dead.
Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our
Lord the great and all-embracing sacrifice of our love, pouring out our
treasury of hymns and prayers before him who offered his cross in
sacrifice to God for the enrichment of us all.
