We are told that the purpose of our life is to find fulfillment here and now. We are told that psychology, not the spiritual life, determines our lives.

We are told so many things that contradict the Gospel—and told convincingly—that it is sometimes very hard to cling to the scandalous truth which Jesus proclaims with his very life’s blood: at every moment he calls us to carry the cross, not to escape it.

He desires us to embrace it as the one true path to the Resurrection. The cross is the narrow gate, and Jesus is the way through it, for he walks with us and within us as we make that passage into fullness of life.

The cornerstone of our Faith becomes more difficult to accept to the degree that some voices within the Church echo the voices of the secular world. If the passion of Christ is reduced merely to an historical incident, or worse, merely a symbolic event, then we can be fooled into thinking that for two thousand years the Church has misinterpreted Christ.

Whenever a theology of the Church rejects the full meaning of the cross, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is soon flattened into a social ritual with theological trappings, devotional life appears irrelevant, and the spirituality of the cross comes to be considered a gloomy suppression of the psyche.

Weakness is rejected, and power-broking and the politics of manipulation become the “good.”

Those of us who have families and those who minister to families, know that this eviscerated form of Christianity simply does not work.

In the short run it can seem pleasant enough. There can be some successes, some relief from the tensions of living in an anti-life culture—“the culture of death,” as Pope John Paul II called it. But the short-term solutions always demand a terrible price in the end—a kind of cosmic “buy now, pay later” plan.

Christmas and Easter are the central victorious moments of salvation history. We need to reflect on these mysteries constantly. We need to rejoice in the Incarnation and live in the light of the Resurrection.

But absolutely necessary to such a life is accepting the whole truth of the Gospel. And that means finding the Incarnation and the Resurrection in our suffering.

As we find Jesus there, even in the worst places imaginable, we discover a great secret: within the cross is a hidden joy—hidden beneath the struggle, anguish, and fear.

It takes courage to see things as they are. It takes persistence to keep walking forward. It takes grace.

As we come to believe that Jesus really is with us, we learn to replace fear with trust. As trust grows, love grows. And as love grows, we gradually pass from death to indestructible life.

— Michael O’Brien is a professional artist and author. He and his wife, Sheila, have six children and live in Combermere, Ontario.