Chapter XIV — The Triumph of Eternal Wisdom in the Cross and Through the Cross

167. Here is, I believe, the greatest "secret of the King, sacramentum regis," the greatest mystery of Eternal Wisdom: the Cross.

1. Wisdom and the Cross

Oh, how far removed and how different the thoughts and ways of Eternal Wisdom are from those of men, even the wisest! This great God wishes to redeem the world, to drive out and chain the demons, to close hell and open heaven to men, to render infinite glory to the Eternal Father. Here is a grand design, a difficult work, a great enterprise. What means will this Wisdom use, who by her knowledge reaches from one end of the universe to the other, who disposes all things gently yet acts with might? She has an all-powerful arm; with a single turn of her hand, she can destroy all that is contrary to her and do whatever she wills; with a single word of her mouth, she can annihilate and create; indeed, she has only to will and all is done.

168. But her love gives laws to her power. She wills to become incarnate to show man her friendship; she wills to descend to earth herself, to make him ascend to heaven. So be it! But surely this Incarnate Wisdom will appear glorious and triumphant, accompanied by millions upon millions of angels, or at least by millions of chosen men, and that with these armies, this splendor and this majesty, without poverty, without shame, without humiliations, and without weakness, she will overthrow all her enemies and win the hearts of men by her charms, her pleasures, her grandeur and her riches?

Nothing of the sort. An astonishing thing! She sees, among the Jews, an object of scandal and horror, and, among the pagans, an object of folly; she sees a vile and contemptible piece of wood, used for the shame and the punishment of the most wicked and wretched criminals, called a gibbet, a gallows, or a cross. It is upon this cross that she casts her eyes; she takes her delight in it; she cherishes it above all that is great and glorious in heaven and on earth, to be the instrument of her conquests and the ornament of her majesty, the riches and the pleasures of her empire, the friend and the bride of her heart. O altitudo sapientiae et scientiae Dei: O depth of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How surprising is her choice, and how sublime and incomprehensible are her designs and judgments! But how ineffable is her love for this Cross!

169. Incarnate Wisdom loved the Cross from her childhood: Hanc amavi a juventute mea. No sooner had she entered the world than she received it, in the womb of her Mother, from the hands of the Eternal Father, and placed it in the center of her heart, to reign there, saying: "Deus meus, volui, et legem tuam in medio cordis mei. My God, my Father, I chose this Cross while in your bosom; I choose it in the womb of my Mother; I love it with all my strength; and I place it in the center of my heart to be my bride and my mistress."

170. During his entire life, he sought the Cross with eagerness. If he ran, like a thirsting deer, from village to village and from town to town; if he marched with giant strides toward Calvary; if he spoke so often of his sufferings and his death to his Apostles and disciples, and even to his prophets during his transfiguration; if he cried out so often: "Desiderio desideravi. I have desired, but with an infinite desire"; all his journeys, all his eagerness, all his searching, all his desires tended toward the Cross, and he regarded it as the height of his glory and his highest fortune to die in its embrace.

He espoused the Cross with ineffable love in his Incarnation; he carried it and sought it with continual joy during his whole life, which was nothing but a continual cross; and, after making many efforts to go and embrace it and die upon it on Calvary: Quomodo coarctor usque dum perficiatur: And how am I held back? And what restrains me? And why can I not yet embrace you, dear Cross of Calvary?

171. At last he reached the summit of his desires. He was covered with insults; he was fastened and, as it were, glued to the Cross, and he died with joy in the embrace of his dear friend, as on his bed of honor and triumph.

172. Do not suppose that after his death, to triumph more fully, he detached himself from the Cross or rejected it. Far from it. He so united and, as it were, incorporated himself with the Cross that there is neither angel, nor man, nor creature in heaven or on earth that can separate him from it. Their bond is indissoluble, their alliance is eternal: never the Cross without Jesus, nor Jesus without the Cross.

By his death he rendered the ignominies of the Cross so glorious, its poverty and nakedness so rich, its pains so agreeable, its rigors so charming, that he has, as it were, wholly divinized it and made it adorable to angels and men; and he commands all his subjects to adore it with him. He does not wish the honor of adoration, even relative, to be paid to other creatures, however exalted they may be, such as his most holy Mother; this great honor is reserved and due only to his dear Cross. He will cause to cease, on the great day of judgment, all veneration of the relics of the saints, even the most venerable; but for the relics of his Cross, he will command the first Seraphim and Cherubim to go throughout the world and gather the fragments of the true Cross, which, by his loving omnipotence, will be so well reunited that they will form only one Cross, the very Cross upon which he died. He will have this Cross carried in triumph by the Angels, who will sing canticles of joy over it. He will have himself preceded by this Cross, set upon the most brilliant cloud that has ever appeared, and he will judge the world with it and through it.

What will be the joy of the friends of the Cross when they see it! But what will be the despair of its enemies, who, unable to bear the sight of this brilliant and thundering Cross, will cry out to the mountains to fall upon them and to hell to swallow them up!

2. The Cross and Us

173. Eternal Wisdom, while awaiting the great day of his triumph at the last judgment, wills that the Cross be the signal, the mark, and the weapon of all his elect.

He receives no child who does not bear it as his mark; he receives no disciple who does not carry it on his forehead without blushing, on his heart without being repelled, and on his shoulders without dragging it or casting it off. He cries out: Si quis vult venire post me, etc.

He receives no soldier who does not take it as his weapon to defend himself, to attack, to overthrow, and to crush all his enemies, and he cries to them: Confidite, ego vici mundum. In hoc signo vinces. Trust in me, my soldiers: I am your captain; I am victorious over my enemies through the Cross, and you too shall be victorious by this sign.

174. He has enclosed so many treasures, so many graces, so much life, and so much joy in the Cross that he reveals them only to his greatest favorites. He often reveals to his friends, as to his Apostles, all his other secrets: Omnia nota fecit vobis; but not those of the Cross, unless they have merited it by great fidelity and great labors. Oh, how humble, how little, how mortified, how interior, and how despised by the world one must be, to know the mystery of the Cross, which is still today, not only among Jews and pagans, Muslims and heretics, the worldly-wise and bad Catholics, but even among persons called devout and very devout, a subject of scandal, an object of folly, of contempt and of flight; not in speculation, for never has so much been said and written as now about the beauty and excellence of the Cross; but in practice, for people fear, complain, excuse themselves, and flee when it is a matter of suffering something.

"Confiteor tibi, Pater, Domine Rex coeli et terrae, quia abscondisti hoc a sapientibus et prudentibus hujus saeculi, et revelasti ea parvulis: My Father," said Incarnate Wisdom one day, in a transport of joy upon seeing the beauty of the Cross, "I give you thanks that you have hidden the treasures and the marvels of my Cross from the wise and prudent of this world, and that you have revealed them to the humble and the little ones." [Lk 10:21]

175. If the knowledge of the mystery of the Cross is so special a grace, what is the actual enjoyment and possession of it! It is a gift that Eternal Wisdom bestows only on his greatest friends, and even then only after many prayers, desires, and supplications. However excellent the gift of faith may be, by which one pleases God, draws near to him, and overcomes his enemies, and without which one must be damned, the Cross is a still greater gift.

St. Peter, says St. John Chrysostom, is happier in prison for Jesus Christ than on Mount Tabor in the midst of glory; he is more glorified to wear chains on his feet than to hold the keys of paradise in his hands. St. Paul esteems it a greater glory to be chained for his Savior than to be raised to the third heaven. God bestowed a greater grace on the Apostles and martyrs by giving them his Cross to carry amid humiliations, poverty, and the cruelest torments, than by giving them the gift of miracles and the conversion of the whole world.

All those to whom Eternal Wisdom has communicated herself have all been desirous of the Cross; they have sought it, embraced it, and, when some occasion of suffering came their way, they cried out from the depths of their hearts with St. Andrew: "O bona Crux, tamdiu desiderata: O good Cross, so long desired!"

176. The Cross is good and precious for an infinity of reasons:

1. Because it makes us like Jesus Christ;

2. Because it makes us the worthy children of the Eternal Father, the worthy members of Jesus Christ, and the worthy temples of the Holy Spirit. God the Father chastises every child he receives: it is an oracle: "castigat... omnem filium quem recipit." Jesus Christ receives as his own only those who carry their crosses. The Holy Spirit cuts and polishes all the living stones of the heavenly Jerusalem, that is, the predestined;

3. The Cross is good because it enlightens the mind and gives it more understanding than all the books in the world: qui non est tentatus, quid scit? [Sir 34:9]

4. Because, when well carried, it is the cause, the nourishment, and the proof of love. It kindles the fire of divine love in the heart by detaching it from creatures. It maintains and increases that love; and as wood is the food of fire, the Cross is the food of love. It is the surest proof that one loves God. It is this proof that God used to show us that he loves us; and it is also the proof that God asks of us to show him that we love him;

5. The Cross is good because it is an abundant source of every kind of sweetness and consolation, and it produces joy, peace, and grace in the soul;

6. Finally, it is good because it produces, for the one who carries it, an immense weight of glory in heaven: immensum gloriae pondus operatur. [2 Cor 4:17]

177. If people knew the value of the Cross, they would make novenas, like St. Peter of Alcantara, to obtain this delicate morsel of paradise. They would say, with St. Teresa: "Aut pati, aut mori: Either to suffer or to die"; or, with St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi: "Non mori, sed pati: Not to die, but to suffer." They would ask, with Blessed John of the Cross, only for the grace of suffering something for him: "pati et contemni pro te." "Of all the things of earth, only the Cross is esteemed in heaven," said this blessed saint to a servant of God after his death. "I have crosses that are of such great value," said Our Lord to one of his servants, "that they are all that my dear Mother, all-powerful as she is, can obtain from me for her faithful servants."

178. Worldly wise man, honest man of the world, you do not understand this mystical language. You love pleasure too much, you seek your comfort too much, you love the goods of this world too much, you fear contempt and humiliations too much; in a word, you are too much the enemies of the Cross of Jesus Christ. You esteem and even praise the Cross in general, but not your own, which you flee as much as you can, or which you merely drag along reluctantly, grumbling, growing impatient, and complaining. It seems to me that I see the cows that, lowing, dragged reluctantly the Ark of the Covenant, in which was enclosed what was most precious in the world: trahentes et mugientes. [1 Sam 6:12]

179. The number of fools and of the unhappy is infinite, says Wisdom, because the number of those who do not know the value of the Cross and carry it against their will is infinite. But you, true disciples of Eternal Wisdom, who have fallen into many temptations and afflictions, who suffer many persecutions for the sake of justice, who are treated as the refuse of the world, take consolation, rejoice, leap for joy, because the Cross that you carry is a precious gift that the blessed in heaven envy, but of which they are no longer capable. All the honor, all the glory, and all the virtue in God, and his Holy Spirit himself, rest upon you, because your reward is great in heaven and even on earth, through the spiritual graces it obtains for you.

3. Practical Conclusion

180. Drink, friends of Jesus Christ, drink from his chalice of bitterness, and you will become his friends. Suffer with him, and you will be glorified with him; suffer with patience and even with joy. Yet a little while, and then an eternity of happiness for a moment of pain.

Make no mistake: since Incarnate Wisdom had to enter heaven through the Cross, it is necessary for us to enter after him by the same path. Whichever way you turn, says the Imitation of Christ, you will always find the Cross: either the cross of one predestined, if you accept it as you should, with patience and joyfully for the love of God; or that of one reprobate, if you carry it with impatience and against your will, like so many doubly wretched souls who are obliged to say for all eternity in hell: Ambulavimus vias difficiles: We toiled and suffered in the world, and in the end, here we are damned.

True Wisdom is not found on earth, nor in the hearts of those who live at their ease. She has made her dwelling so completely in the Cross that outside of it you will not find her in this world; and she has so incorporated and united herself with the Cross that one can say in truth: Wisdom is the Cross, and the Cross is Wisdom.