The wisdom of the cross today
During a solemn assembly at the Antonianum in Rome to mark the occasion of the third centenary of the birth of their founder, St. Paul of the Cross, the Passionist Fathers invited cardinal Miloslav Vlk, Archbishop of Prague, to tell his experience. We publish his talk here for our readers because it contains in its simple telling a profound theology of the cross which is of great significance today.
Cardinal Miloslav Vlk
The Fulfilment Of A Promise
The invitation to take part in this international Congress on the theme "The wisdom of the Cross today: The Cross of Christ our only Hope", has given me great joy. I say this not simply out of courtesy, but because this invitation allows me to fulfill a vow I made to Jesus Crucified, on a winter's day in the 70's on the streets of Prague, when I was cleaning the windows of the communist State shops. I was a priest unknown to others, not allowed to exercise my ministry.
One day while cleaning the window of a shop, a fomer school friend from my native village, passed by and recognised me. He was really annoyed when he saw what I had to do. He said to me: "You are a priest and you must do such humble and miserable work". Then he started to curse the communists who had put me into this situation. He hurled all the abuse he could against them, using all the swear words he knew. He used the various names of animals to describe our "enemies". But I tried to explain to him that the Church has always to suffer in its members, in some part of the world, in order to complete "what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body" (Col 1:24). But he did not understand what I meant and he railed against the communists again repeating the same things. I tried again to explain, but there was no way that he could accept what I was saying.
I felt really awful about this: here was a Christian in the presence of a living cross and yet he did not understand. It was in this situation of great suffering there and then, on that street, that I made a simple vow: "Jesus, you suffered your passion on the Cross for us, and we Christians are sometimes like the apostles before the Passion: we do not understand "such talk" (Mk 9:32) of your Cross and we do not concern ourselves with "the things of God", but rather with "the things of men" (Mk 8:33). I promise you, Lord, to speak of this one day when I will be free, when I will once more have the possibility to proclaim your suffering and speak of your blessed Cross".
Today is a great moment which enables me to do what I promised, and this is why I thank you with all my heart.
The Starting Point: the Word of Jesus.
The subtitle of my talk which reads "Prophetic voices about the Cross" invites me to tell about my life along the way of the Cross, not in order to teach a doctrine or dictate a meditation, but rather, to allow myself explain a little the starting point of this "prophetic voice" of my little experience.
During the difficult times of the persecution, the chapters 8-10 of Mark's Gospel struck me very much. Jesus announces his passion three times. And he links this announcement strictly with that concerning his resurrection. It is interesting that Jesus always does this after a solemn moment: for example, after Peter's profession of faith, after the transfiguration and the healing of the demoniac, or when faced with the incomprehension of the apostles. Jesus speaks of his death and James and John ask to be seated on his right and on his left in glory!
Jesus reproves Peter in no uncertain terms. He says"Hypage Satana" when Peter would want to take him away from his path. With the same words: "Hypage Satana" ( Mt. 4:10 ), Jesus had cast away the devil in the deser, the devil who had previously tried to seduce him.
It is the temptation to look for hapiness, for well being, peace, communion with God and with one's brothers and sisters by human means alone. After the fall of the first Adam and the coming amongst us of the new Adam, there is no other way to achieve hapiness for humanity's future than the way of God, the way of extreme love, the love which has been most explained to us as revealed on the cross.
When Jesus proclaimed the memorial of his passion, of his cross, of his unfathomable kenosis in the holy eucharist — in the same way as regarding his prophecy about the cross — many did not understand and they went away (cf. Jn. 6). And when Peter rejected the Kenosis of Jesus in the Upper Room, when He gave an example in the washing of the disciples' feet, Jesus said clearly: "You can have no part in me" (Jn.13:8).
To be in communion with Jesus means to journey with Him — who is Life — on the same road of His cross. Paul expresses this with his typical and eloquent phrase syn-: synstaurothęnai (to be co-crucified or crucified with: cf. Rm. 6:6; Gal. 2:20), synegerthęnai (to be co-risen or to be risen with: cf. Col. 3:1). To carry the cross means to be crucified with Him, to share with Him, the Crucified, a common journey and destiny. The Germans express this with a beautiful word: Weggemeinschaft, Schicksalgemeinschaft.
The Crucified One is not a symbol but Jesus in Person
In the 1950's at the beginning of communist rule in my country we looked to the Western democracies, to American forces, in short, to human forces to save us. God brought us to understand slowly, very slowly, as a Church, that His way, the path of the future, was different to the one we had thought. A few priests were also tempted to save the Church by other means, the way of compromise. But this did not work.
When the "Prague Springtime" was over, the atmosphere changed and became very difficult. We were truly on our own, abandoned. But the iron curtain was not so thick so as to prevent the new currents of spirituality seep in from the West. I am thinking here in particular about the spirituality of the Focolare Movement and of its vision of Jesus crucified and abandoned.
When I compared my understanding of the Cross with that of those who lived this spirituality, I could see early on that I was looking on the Cross of Jesus as a sacred object, as the instrument of salvation. I looked upon it as a symbol of all my sufferings and those of the world, of the sufferings and persecutions which I spiritually took upon myself, as a Cross to be carried along with Jesus, uniting myself in this way with Him. In meeting this spirituality I discovered that up to now the Cross had been for me depersonalised: it was a thing, it was not Him, Jesus, a person.
The teaching of the Second Vatican Council had already placed a desire in my heart to have a more personal relationship with the mystery of the Cross. For example, in Dei Verbum (n.2) I found underlined the personal character of revelation: God "reveals Himself", "speaks to men and converses with them as friends"; or, in Sacrosanctum Concilium (n.7), I read of the living presence of the Lord through the Word, the sacraments, and communion under the guidance of pastors.....
I was fascinated by this figure of Jesus abandoned as presented by the Focolare spirituality. I remember reading and meditating on the words of the prophet Isaiah and being very struck by the words: "He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows" (53:4). Not only sins, but every sorrow and suffering: not just those of the past, but also mine and those of all of today's humanity.
I began to see that when I meet with the sufferings of my daily life, which Jesus then "took upon himself", they now mystically link me with Him who takes them upon himself. It is by way of a perichoresis of time, a perichoresis of the past with the present which opens up a new future, that these sufferings are intertwined and become one thing in Christ. So it is in embracing my pains and sufferings that I embrace in them Jesus crucified.
My sufferings and persecutions now had a living face, that of Jesus crucified. It was a great discovery for me, like entering into a divine "game": rediscovering in all sufferings this "man of sorrows" "despised and rejected by men" (Is. 53:3).
The daring risky nature of this idea did not stop me in joining in the "game". I found it to be in total agreement with the theology of Saint Paul, with his being crucified-with and risen-with, and with the theology of chapter twenty five of Matthew's Gospel, wherein the hidden presence of Christ in the sick, the suffering, the hungry and thirsty, prisoners and the abandoned is revealed. The Council in Lumen Gentium affirms that: "the Church recognises in the poor and suffering the image of its poor and suffering Founder, (...) and she wants to serve Christ in them" (n.8). In Gaudium et spes it is underlined that "with the incarnation the Son of God is united in a certain way with every man" (n.22).
Source of light and strength
This picture of the Crucified One became a source of light and strength for me during the time of persecution. After the first three years of life as a priest (I had to wait for twelve years before I was ordained), the communist state removed me from the post of secretary to the Bishop. It was a great suffering for him and also for myself. After a brief struggle within myself, I said my "yes!". Jesus, on the Cross, was expelled from his own country through the false witness of his persecutors. I told myself, my expulsion was His.
Nobody could help me. I remained on my own. With this attitude I left for my "exile" in a small village up the mountains. But my experience of exile did not end there: it had just began. After sixteen months my presence became a source of annoyance. The communists said that I was having too much influence on the people and the people listened to me rather than follow their directives.
On All Souls day morning, after the celebration of mass, I was leaving the church when a telephone call came for me from the secretary responsible for religious affairs in the area. He told me that my apointment there was ended. I explained that I had yet to celebrate the evening mass a mass which had already been announced and which, it being All Souls day, would be well attended. The secretary just replied by saying that my licence to celebrate mass had been revoked by the State and therefore, I could not celebrate any mass.
It was an awful blow for me. I really had to struggle within myself to accept this new sharing in the abandonment of Jesus on the Cross. That evening, in the presence of the very many people who came for the mass, I had to explain how it was not possible for me to celebrate mass and that the time had now come for me to witness with my life what I had preached to them: the cross. I added that I forgave those who had wronged me. I left immediately because there were police in the square and I wanted to avoid a possible provocation for which, naturally, they would have held me responsible.
Once again I was on my own, abandoned and in the dark. But this darkness cleared up... I understood that Jesus was also abandoned in the darkness and that my darkness of that moment was contained in His darkness on the Cross, and that therefore the darkness acted as a passedway between me and Him. I re-named my darkness even though I could not glimpse his face: it was Jesus. I was on my own, but in peace and actually in joy, in that joy which is born from the Cross. After a short time I was assigned to a new parish away from southern Bohemia, on the borders of the diocese. The wounds healed slowly but the experience was never again forgotten. The Crucified One had entered my life and had imprinted his seal on my heart.
Seven years later following enjoyable work and the creating of a big parish community, my state licence was revoked again but this time the very possibility of working publicly as a priest was also taken from me. It was 1978 and I remember well having to support myself on the ambo, such was my suffering, as I told the parishoners.
I was rejected. So was He, Jesus crucified, the Rejected of men, right up to the most important point in His life, when He cried out His feeling of abandonment even by His Father:"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mt. 27:46; Mk. 15:34). I made the effort to embrace the situation as His abandonment, just as He did.
The Cross: hope which does not delude
Having become a "refugee", I lived in Prague in order to hide myself from the police. I had no doubt about it, the "dark night" had started for me. I always said my "yes2 to the Lord, but I had to struggle to maintain my faith, because everything within me rebelled and often I would cry out: "Why, Lord?". Once, which I was asking this question, I felt a response within me saying: "Because I love you". There were the words of a song, but my soul was lit up and I understood what the Lord wanted to tell me: "I do not want your work. I want you, I want your time for me. Your work could still be an obstacle between us, and I want you to live for me, not for work".
I understood that God holds time, history and the powers of this world in his hands. I understood that every situation is revealing the plan of divine love for us and so I exclaimed: "Once more, I have believed in the love of God" (1 Jn 4: 15).
In this way faith with its peace accompanied me during my new work as a window-cleaner in the streets of Prague. For almost ten years I wandered those streets, through hot and cold weather, but always sustained by faith and love.
I understood that Jesus had always lived the Cross in his life, and not only at the end. Jesus had lived the Cross from the moment he was incarnated because he did the will of the Father and not his own (cf. Jn 5:30; 6:38). I understood that the Cross would have to be a constant co-ordinate in my life, a normal co-ordinate. To clean windows as a daily work was a cross. I hadn't chosen it, and perhaps I would have to clean them for the rest of my life.
Thsoe ten years were the most blessed of my priestly life. I felt that I was living priesthood to the full and when moments of discouragement came the power of the Crucified One would immediately re-emerge. To embrace Jesus Forsaken on the Cross was for me time and time again a source of light and strength! Jesus has breathed out the Spirit on the cross (cf. Jn 19:20) and I on the cross was more and more more his priest.
You cannot imagine my joy when one day I read the words of John Paul II which he addressed to the many priests gathered for a congress in the Nervi hall in 1982: "In embracing the suffering Jesus in the daily trials one is immediately united with the Spirit of the Risen One which is helping strength (cf. Rom 6:5; Phil 1:19)".(1) Here then was the secret of the strength which sustained me in those ten years. Here too was the light of hope, the Cross, which was no longer a sacred object, but a living person: Jesus Crucified and Forsaken, encountered and embraced in the sufferings!
Yes, the Cross is the hope which is light for life and for the future. It is the hope which does not disappoint. And you can experience it as such. One year before the velvet revolution, I was able to return to a small parish. Three months after the revolution I was nominated the Bishop of Ceské Budejovice, and a year later Archbishop of Prague.
The Cross, the Only Hope
Almost by way of summary and conclusion, I would like to tell you of a strong experience I have had in recent months. At the end of last November I was sitting in the Paul VI hall dressed as a cardinal. I was sitting in front of a huge scuptur of Jesus Risen. It was like a dream for me who had been a refugee, a window cleaner in Prague, as well as being condemned to silence and oblivion... In looking at the really impressive image of the Risen One, I listened to the reading from the first letter of St. Peter (1 Pet 5:6) in the liturgy for the creation of the new cardinals: "Humble yourselves before the powerful hand of God".
My thoughts went back to a place of pilgrimmage in Southern Bohemia. The year was 1952, two days after my school-leaving examination for which I had been awared top marks in all subjects, but because I was not part of the Communist Youth, I had not other prospects beyond becoming a simple manual worker in a factory or building site. That day too the reading at Mass was the same one. I remembered that then I had said yes. I accepted that word of God as the guiding word for my future: "humble yourselves before the powerful hand of God". Take up your cross, your weakness, your darkness, your being nothing.
And now here, before the sculptur of the Risen One which is so large that you cannot but be totally taken over by Him, I was listening once more to these words. A great joy suddenly invaded me when I heard the next phrase: "so that He will exalt you in his time...after a brief suffering". I understood! Now was "his time". I was living it! Not as a personal exaltation or honour, obviously, but in order to continue to work explicitly and publicly for his kingdom.
The Corss, light, hope. I am beginning humbly to understand more. I see and touch it with my hands. It is true, He is the source of strength, of light, of hope, of the fullness of joy.
The Cross of Christ is still today—and will be forever—our only hope!
(1)Homily of John Paul II given during the mass celebrated at the International meeting "The Priest today-the Religious today", 30 April 1982, n. 3.