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AND HE called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it." [Mk 8:34-35]

Artist: Victor Luciano Rebuffo

(1903-1983)

Buenos Aires, Argentina

INWARD TO OUTWARD ^_[1]

EVERYTHING CALLED A SYSTEM

1. Sometimes media functions like a telescope. Using graphics and text as lenses, advertisers accentuate products to deliberately enlarge what a consumer sees, so that having gained his attention, he may be overwhelmed and enticed into buying what he does not need or even want. A recent example of this is the advertising industry’s obsession with the word system.

2. The word system is highly valued in contemporary jargon, perhaps because of phenomenal advances in computer technology, space exploration and weaponry. Everything now is called a system. Advertisers are fond of heaping frothy claims on their clients' products. Like a telescope focused on minute near-by objects, they magnify the importance of merchandise beyond its authentic purpose and value. Children have great difficulty understanding this and strong parental oversight is essential.

NOTE THE HYPE

3. An example of a common grocery-store product, the significance of which is grossly exaggerated by the manufacturer’s advertising, is toilet-tank freshener. Before you open a box of blue tablets to drop one into a bathroom toilet tank, note the hype. The manufacturer’s label calls these blue tablets a system.

4. When one cuts the protective wrapper with a pair of scissors, and drops the tablet into the tank, he is using a system. Well! If this is indeed a system, then any homeowner can claim the title of toilet tank purification engineer, a micro-system septic specialist. Who can I bill for my time?

VAST AND BOUNDLESS

5. While the foolish wait for an answer, we will pursue the analogy of the telescope in a far more productive way. Using our human intellect as a means of magnification, let us examine an event that often is minimized or even ignored altogether. This signal event is the "Triumph of the Cross".

6. To amplify the authentic truth and incomparable value of Christ’s victory, let us chance an observation about the nature of human existence and the cosmos in which we live. The cosmos is truly a system. It is dynamic in the sense that its distinguishing attribute is not this star or that galaxy, but rather motion itself, that is, its vast and boundless activity.

FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE

7. Now, for what it is worth, we observe that a fundamental principle or activity of all creation is the movement from inward to outward. Ponder a moment on the hypothesis of inward to outward and a few of marvelous examples which support it. Consider creation and physics: a.) the popular "big bang" theory of the creation of the universe, b.) the manufacture of atomic energy, and c.) the sun’s radiating light and heat.

8. Consider technology: a.) the explosion of information on the internet, b.) the space exploration program, and c.) the discovery of medicines and vaccines. Contemplate: a.) the incomparable love of Jesus’ Sacred Heart, b.) the virtues of humility and trust, c.) childbirth, d.) the miracle of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity, and e.) most especially on this feast day, the Triumph of the Cross.

SUPERNATURAL EVENT

9. Suspended on the cross between heaven and earth, Jesus entered into the marrow of death’s darkness. From the inside, Our Lord burst open death’s doors by the power of his own resurrection. Releasing the souls of God’s chosen people, who had died awaiting the fulfillment of his incarnate mission, Christ commissioned them to go forth to the everlasting joys of heaven. From the inside, Christ liberated every generation of faithful followers from the finality and futility of death.

10. Can any of us ever forget how Jesus entered our hearts and cast our sins away farther than lightening travels from east to west? This inward to outward supernatural event transformed the very symbology of the horrific and scandalous cross itself. From a particular and historically-bound instrument of death, Jesus elevates the cross to the universal sign of the Gospel of salvation.

GOD'S SYSTEM

11. Hence, there is no greater witness today of God’s system of redemption than our full and vigorous participation in the life of the universal Roman Catholic Church, now exceeding one-billion believers strong. The Fathers of the Vatican Council evidenced a great awareness of the inward to outward movement of the Gospel, especially in the lives of lay Catholic men and women. The lay faithful:

...ARE CALLED by God that, being led by the spirit to the Gospel, they may contribute to the sanctification of the world, as from within like leaven, by fulfilling their own particular duties. Thus, especially by the witness of their life, resplendent in faith, hope and charity, they must manifest Christ to others. It pertains to them in a special way so to illuminate and order all temporal things with which they are so closely associated that these may be effected and grow according to Christ and may be to the glory of the Creator and Redeemer.^[2]

HENCE, THE laity, dedicated as they are to Christ, and anointed by the Holy Spirit, are marvelously called and prepared so that even richer fruits of the Spirit may be produced in them. For all their works, prayers and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, daily work, relaxation of mind and body, if they are accomplished in the Spirit—indeed even the hardships of life if patiently borne—all these become spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ....the laity consecrate the world itself to God.^[3]

THUS, EVERY lay person, through those gifts given to him, is at once the witness and the living instrument of the mission of the Church itself "according to the measure of Christ’s bestowal". [Eph 4:7] ^[4]

Returning to the word system, the greatest system of all is the Kingdom of God, and only the Holy Trinity is Master. If you believe that the laity consecrate the world by their sacrificial temporal and spiritual offerings, then you must also believe that you are marked by a sacred origin and that as a member of God's sacred order, you are obliged to respect it.

IMMERSED IN GOD'S ORDER

12. We Christians are not merely associated with God—we are “immersed” in God’s sacred order. Your support of God’s Church strengthens the divine plan which God began with the little community of faith in Bethlehem’s stable.During the days of Our Lord’s ministry in Israel, villagers and townspeople alerted one another saying, Jesus is passing by! The people paused in their work and rushed out to greet the Lord as he and his apostles approached. Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem on the day we celebrate as Palm Sunday was a most joyful occasion.

13. Nevertheless Palm Sunday was only a foretaste, a prophecy, a fleeting image of the solemn, majestic, and eternal procession of the three divine persons within the one godhead of the Holy Trinity. If the Holy Trinity can be understood in some sense as a divine circle, then Christians instinctively know what must happen. We must strive with all our mind, heart, soul and strength to get inside the circle! We want to be worthy of entering the heavenly procession.

CHALICE AND BANQUET

14. We may say that the Kingdom of God is ultimate reality, the sacred order of all things seen and unseen, known and unknown eternally pouring forth from the Most Holy Trinity. You would do well to ponder the Holy Trinity as a divine “chalice” always overflowing, a divine “banquet” whose splendid fare is never exhausted. What is this but a different way of speaking about the “circle” and “procession”!

15. How sad it is that some Christians hold back from adoring the Holy Trinity, content to be spectators but never participants in the heavenly procession. Certainly negative things—indifference, selfishness and promiscuity to name only three—emerge as great obstacles to be overcome. It is no accident that we say, Sin is deadly. How sad it is for the Christian community to discover one of its members has departed this sacred procession of God’s Kingdom. Or that a devout family must bear the heartache of knowing that a loved one refuses to undertake the spiritual quest at all!

HIGHEST LEVEL

16. If your Christian activity is reduced to attending Sunday worship, the next level of stewardship is your participation in the Church’s ongoing program of ministries. If you are faithful Sunday worshippers who have benefited from our wide variety of parish programs, the Lord calls you to the highest level of stewardship: to create, nurture and lead new ministries and to evangelize our secular society, indeed to sanctify the world. "Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead." [Jam 2:17]

17. Your free-will gift of your very own self affirms that God alone is the source of all good, the origin and fulfillment of all things. Your selfless sharing testifies to your gratitude for Christ's sacrifice on the cross. You thank him for counting you worthy of a chair at his heavenly banquet table. Your habit of generous charity builds up the Lord’s Kingdom and confers on you grace upon grace. You improve the lives of individual human beings here and now, and you help the Lord himself to build a highway to eternity for his faithful people.

TANGIBLE SUPPORT

18. Jesus Christ, a worthy steward of his Father’s house, has given you every good thing and countless blessings besides. In return, the Lord asks that you reserve a meaningful portion of your abundance for the express purpose of building up his Church on earth. Hence, your inward-to-outward tangible support of the Church accomplishes a mighty work in the Lord’s name.

19. Consider that St. Paul the Apostle was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write these words to the universal Church: “Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.” [1Cor 3:12-13]

^[1] Cycle B /Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time /Isa 50:4-9 /Jas 2:14-18 /Mk 8:27-25.

^[2] VATICAN II, Lumen Gentium, no. 31 (1964).

^[3] Cf ibid., 34.

^[4] Cf ibid., 33.

INWARD TO OUTWARD [1]