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Today's word is cross.
Cross, yes, cross.
Referring to Sunday's Gospel, according to Luca.
Yes, we can take the reference of Luca 14, verse 27
"He who doesn't carry his own cross
and does not follow me, can not be my disciple".
So, but cross is a word that does not
appear often in the Bible, I mean,
has appeared in the New Testament,
but in the old Testament it does not appear.
It does not appear in the old Testament, I mean,
is a vague allusion to it, to this issue,
something that could be similar to
Deuteronomy 21, 22-23
"If a man has committed a crime which
deserves death and you have put him to death
and hung his corpse at a tree, it will not have to stay
hanging from the tree the whole night but you
will have to bury it the same day,
because the hanging is a curse of God".
So basically we are dealing with somebody
who commits a crime which deserves death penalty,
and you, obviously what do you do?
You hang the corpse to a tree as an example.
To show everyone that he has done something bad.
To show everyone, because capital executions,
if they are not done coram populo
what is the purpose? But you don't leave
corpse there to decompose, because we are
dealing with the decomposition of a corpse
this will include the town
and it is not right.
Yes, but it's the only thing,
so since the Greek word stavros
also means erect, stake, fence, becomes the
capital execution which we konw today
during the classic period, in the Greek period, well...
Roman, especially Roman.
It was the Romans which
had the habit to crucify people.
Yes, to impale them. Then we had the issue,
there were various techniques. One was
impalement, even if the Turkish impalement
not invented by the Romans, or there
was also this gallows, this stake engraved
in the ground, where they used to put on top
in the transversal part with the condemned,
or it was simply tied to a torture pole
in short there where different ways.
But anyway it is clear that it is a kind of expression
which derives from the classic world.
Well, so, why it is so interesting, why has it become
such a symbol, we even do the sign
of the cross, we do...
Because, because it is a fact, because Jesus
was crucified, even talking with respect, if he
would have been hanged our symbol
would have become the gallows.
...well, luckily it's not...
Well, fortunately, but consider that the effect
that the cross would give to the people
the first Christians, was exactly the same
that we get from the gallows.
This is also true.
Centuries have passed before the Christians
adapted to the idea of representing the cross,
even worse, Jesus crucified or Jesus suffering
because he was crucified, now we have,
we all have it in all our churches, even if
unfortunately now we have certain crucifixes in the
churches, especially in the modern ones,
which we don't even understand that they are
Crucifixes, because we are scared,
we are going back to being scared to show
the cross, but centuries have passed,
because it used to have an effect...
That means, the Crucifix was not
immediately represented in the church?
No, it took centuries and centuries before
the crucifix was shown, exactly because the cross was,
it had the same effect as if at a certain point
instead of having the cross as a symbol we would have
the gallows or the electric chair.
Yes, I understand.
It is the symbol of torture, of the condemned,
the non-noble, of the slave. The problem
is that there is a fact, it is a fact, it is a happening,
the fact that Jesus has been crucified and, so, the
historical fact of crucifixion leaves the Christians
front of the problem that the salvation of the world
through this fact, this fundamental reality of crucifixion.
It is what Paul says in his letter to the Colossians
who, confronted with this fact, tries to realize it
and in Colossians 1,20 says:
"Through him to reconcile to himself all things,
by making peace through his blood,
shed on the cross, whether things on
earth or things in heaven"
there is a long way to go from the idea that
one who has died of the worst death that you can
possibly imagine, to the effect that this fact is
the salvation of the world.
For this reason it has become the symbol that
we matter-of-factly carry on ourselves?
Yes and no, in the sense that
the Christians have certainly done this,
by thinking at the cross of Christ, but it was
there also anyway, and this is a Judaic tradition,
which included the fact of carrying symbols
drawings on yourself as religious symbols and it
was this that most likely had
had also an importance.
find the example of Ezekiel 9:4
the Angel says, the Lord tells the Angel:
" Pass through the middle of the city, in the
middle of Jerusalem, and draw a Tau,
(the Tau is a letter of the Hebrew alphabet which
has the shape of a cross)
on the forehead of the men who sigh and
cry for all the abominations which are being done. "
So, the cross, namely the idea of wearing a symbol
already existed in Judaism. That this symbol then
then was the cross, derives from the fact that
the cross... that Jesus was crucified.
It is the place where Jesus was crucified,
and so the Christians, because they carry this
symbol of the cross. It is a question to identify oneself,
to carry on them the salvation from the cross of
Christ which has been conquered.