THE BISHOP'S CROZIER: The Cross and the Eucharist: The Antidote for Sin and Death

By Bishop James R. Golka

On Sept. 14, we celebrated the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. This great feast day helps us to remember all that the Cross reveals about God’s merciful love for us and how Jesus’ death on the Cross not only reconciles us to God but restores our deep and intimate communion with him.

Looking at Jesus crucified upon the cross reveals two fundamental truths. First, it reveals the true horror of our sin. It was all of our sins that caused Jesus to suffer such a cruel and agonizing death.  In a culture that tends to trivialize sin and even celebrate it, the cross reminds us of the real consequences of our sin and how it deeply wounds our relationship with God and others.  Therefore, ongoing conversion and repentance for our sin must be at the heart of our Christian discipleship. But the cross also reveals God’s response to sin — God’s unimaginable love and mercy for us that would move him to give his only Son for our salvation. As St. John Paul II reminds us: “How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he ‘gained so great a Redeemer’, and if God ‘gave his only Son’ in order that man ‘should not perish but have eternal life.’” (Redemptor Hominis, 10) The cross is our great consolation and hope that if we turn to God and repent of our sin, his mercy and love for us endures forever. 

It is also through the cross that Jesus gives us fullness of life and restores our intimate communion with God that was lost through original sin. In fact, the Fathers of the Church, like St. Ephrem, called the cross the New Tree of Life.  To understand this, we need to go back to the Book of Genesis.  After God created Adam, “the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.  The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” (Gn 2:8-9) The tree of life that was in the middle of the garden represented Adam and Eve’s intimate communion with God.  As long as they ate of the fruit of the tree of life, they shared in God’s very life and love. 

Tragically, Adam and Eve, tempted by the devil, disobeyed God and chose to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil believing “that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Gn 3:5) Adam and Eve rejected God and the life and love that he offered them, and they separated themselves from God.  The ultimate consequence of this original sin is revealed when Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden of Eden: “Then the Lord God said, ‘Behold, the man has become like one of us knowing good and evil.  Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’  Therefore, the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.  He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.” (Gn 3:22-24) By no longer being able to eat of the fruit of the tree of life, Adam and Eve lost communion with God and the sharing in his divine life. 

Centuries later, at the culminating point of God’s loving plan of salvation, we find another man in a garden.  Jesus, the New Adam, was in the garden of Gethsemane undergoing his agony the night before he died.   Unlike Adam, Jesus perfectly obeyed the will of the Father, and out of great love for us embraced the cross and accomplished our salvation.  Jesus, the Son of God offered in sacrifice on the wood of the cross, become the New Tree of Life through which we once again have access to communion with God and his divine life of grace. But recall in Genesis that Adam and Eve were specifically banned from eating the fruit of the tree of life.  So, if Jesus crucified on the cross is the New Tree of Life, then what is its fruit?  Jesus himself gave us the answer: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.  For my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.” (Jn 6:53-56)  

From the altar of the cross, Jesus gives us his very body and blood in the Eucharist to eat so that we can once again have intimate communion with God and share in his life forever. The cross and the Eucharist are inseparable, and they together are the true antidote to sin and death. Let us acclaim with joyful and thankful praise, “We adore you O Christ, and we praise you, because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.”