In today’s second reading, we heard part of the hand-written post-script, in which St. Paul rounds off and sums up his fiery letter to the Galatians. God forbid, he cries here, that I should boast except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! That is: the Cross of Christ is our life, and our hope, and our glory. Because of it, everything has changed. Christ’s Cross is the definitive revelation of God’s love, and the definitive instrument of his plan for our good. All human history is relative to Christ’s Cross. Especially all the history of Israel, which is salvation history, is relative to Christ’s Cross. The whole former dispensation of God for the children of Abraham was but a preparation for and a prophecy of this.
The problem Paul addresses in this letter is clear enough. He had preached the Gospel to the pagan gentiles of Galatia. Many of them, happily, had been converted, and received baptism. Then later, without any reference to St. Paul himself, some Jewish Christian missionaries had invited themselves into Galatia. These people were very much afraid of being excluded from the fellowship of Israel, because of their Christian faith. To avoid that, they loudly proclaimed their continuing fidelity to the full ceremonial law of Moses. More to the point, they insisted that these Galatian Christians should observe all this law too. It was as if they were suggesting that Christ’s Cross were not enough. In particular they insisted that all male Gentile converts to Christ should accept circumcision. That is, Gentile Christians must also become fully Jewish proselytes. In this way, these missionaries would get the credit for having won new converts to Judaism. They would also escape the suspicion, opprobrium and open persecution of the violently anti-Christian Jewish majority.
For St. Paul, this was flat betrayal of the Gospel. Before he himself had encountered and believed in Jesus Christ, Paul had thought that our proper relationship with God could be expressed and achieved through observance of the Mosaic law. A central tenet of that law was the strict separation of Jews from Gentiles. The Jews were God’s people; the Gentiles were not. The Jews were In, the Gentiles were Out, and the two must absolutely never mix. But Christ’s Cross changed all that. Through it, God did what the law could never do. Through the Cross of Christ, and in no other way, we are at last truly reconciled to God, washed clean of our sins, saved, redeemed, justified, sanctified, glorified. Christ’s Cross has set us radically free: free from the law; free from the power of sin; free from slavery to the devil; free from the corruption of this present world; free from alienation from God; free at last from death. And therefore: because of Christ’s Cross, all barriers between Jew and Gentile - indeed all social barriers whatever - are now torn down, and irrelevant. Those who are baptised into Christ’s death become by that means the true children of Abraham, and in Christ children of God. They are the ones who now stand to inherit all the ancient promises. Not only this: in Christ all the baptised together become now heirs of eternal life, and heirs also of eternal divine glory.
As St. Paul saw it - and of course we believe he was right! - someone who preaches the need for anything at all in addition to Christ’s saving Cross has clearly failed to understand its power, its all-sufficiency, its centrality, the radical difference it has made. Whether or not they realise it, these misguided preachers are effectively taking people once set free, and dragging them back into their former slavery.
Our reading today ends with an invocation of peace and mercy. There’s a twist here, because these words - Irene and Eleos - translate the Hebrew Shalom and Hesed. Shalom and Hesed are the qualities ascribed in the Old Testament in particular to the God of the Covenant. Israel’s glory was to inherit them. Of course Paul is now suggesting that the baptised are the ones truly standing in the light of God’s peace and mercy, truly constituting the people of the covenant. But more than that: by their stupidity and infidelity, those Judaising Christians ironically stand to lose their own place in that covenant. They thought they could have it without Christ, so maybe they won’t have it at all!
Well, surely Paul’s burning words, and passionately held conviction must present a challenge also for us. We have to ask ourselves: are we sufficiently convinced of the power of Christ’s Cross? Do we make it the central reference point of our own lives? Do we habitually look out on the world through its lens: understanding everything - especially all suffering and death, and also our relationship with God and with one another - in its light? A further question might be asked, perhaps an even more uncomfortable one. Does the Church in our day sufficiently proclaim Christ’s Cross, as the only source of her life, her fruitfulness, her joy, her beauty, her confidence? Or has her focus shifted a bit, maybe inspired in part by fear and human respect, so that her message, her aim becomes more worldly, more acceptable to those who in principle refuse to have anything to do with Jesus Christ our Lord?
In the 16th century the Protestant Reformers tried to turn the argument of St. Paul in Galatians against the Catholic Church. Just like those Judaising missionaries, they claimed, for Catholics the Cross is not enough. So Catholics are always trying to add something to it: especially through their doctrine of the Sacrifice of the Mass.
We respond that such a charge is entirely without foundation. No: quite, quite, quite to the contrary! Precisely through her doctrine of the sacrifice of the Mass, the Catholic Church demonstrates her unwavering fidelity to St. Paul, and the absolute centrality of the Cross to all her worship and life and preaching and devotion. How so? Because in the Mass, we celebrate, we proclaim, we make present, we offer to God precisely Christ’s saving death. According to the divine will, you can’t separate the Cross from the Last Supper. At the Last supper Christ took his saving death into his hands, and made of it a holy sacrifice. There he commanded his Church to perpetuate this act until end of time. So we do.
I want to leave you with a beautiful prayer that is offered for Priests to say after Mass, especially if they feel they have done so with insufficient care or attention or devotion.
“I beg you, my most loving Lord Jesus Christ: may your passion be for me a strong power, by which I am fortified, protected and defended. May your wounds be for me food and drink, by which I am fed, inebriated and delighted. May the sprinkling of your blood be for me the washing away of all my sins. May your death be for me everlasting life. May your Cross be my eternal glory. May my nourishment, my exaltation, my health and the delight of my heart be in these things: you who live and reign for ever and ever. Amen.”