The Power of the Cross is Love

For the Apostle, St. Paul, "for the word of the CROSS is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God... it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles" (1 Cor 1: 18-23).

"By this sign, you shall conquer." Twas the dream and vision of Emperor Constantine in 312. It may have not been a deep spiritual conversion for the Emperor but it paved the way for Christianity to have legal rights in 313 thru the Edict of Milan.

In 1203, St. Francis of Assisi who would join the rumbles between localities in Italy dreamt of a vast hall hung with armour all marked with the Cross. Although, he thought that the dream meant he was going to become a prince. It set the nagging voice that would lead to his radical conversion.

In 1842, during the night of January 19-20, the atheist and anti-Catholic Jewish St. Alphonse Ratisbonne was confronted with a vision of a plain, bare CROSS, which gave him no peace. This nagging restlessness which wouldn't go away was the initial call that paved the way to the apparition of our Lady of the Miraculous Medal to him and subsequently led to his celebrated conversion.

For the Jewish phenomenologist St. Edith Stein in 1917 amidst deaths brought about by World War I, it was the Mystery of the Cross that made sense of the tribulations of this world. She wrote, "This was my first meeting with the Cross, with the DIVINE STRENGTH it brings to those who bear it. I saw for the first time within my reach the Church, BORN of the REDEEMER's SUFFERINGS in his VICTORY over the sting of DEATH. It was at that moment that my incredulity was shattered and the LIGHT of Christ shone forth, CHRIST in the MYSTERY of the CROSS."

Benedict XVI (in 2008 October 29) eloquently puts it, "Centuries after Paul we see that in history it was the Cross that triumphed and not the wisdom that opposed it. The Crucified One is wisdom, for he truly shows who God is, that is, a force of love which went even as far as the Cross to save men and women. God uses ways and means that seem to us at first sight to be merely weakness. The Crucified One reveals on the one hand man's frailty and on the other, the true power of God, that is the free gift of love: this TOTALLY GRATUITOUS LOVE is TRUE WISDOM."