Roger Harty: The Way Of The Cross

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THE Way Of The Cross is simply a technique for living. It is a symbol for the acceptance of suffering as part and parcel of living our lives.

In a strange way it is also powerful good advice for it is telling us that following The Way of The Cross i.e. Acceptance of suffering, will ultimately deliver us Peace in our lives.

You see suffering of some form or other is part of our lives. In fact show me someone who hasn’t experienced suffering in his life and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t lived.

In order to know high you need to know low, in order to know hot you need to know cold, in order to know light you need to know dark and in order to know peace you have to experience suffering.

It is true to say that ultimately everyone is searching for Peace in their lives, but for some strange reason to achieve peace mankind seems to want to avoid suffering.

Jesus in a nutshell is telling us to do the opposite. He is telling us (advising us!) that the best way towards Peace is to follow The Way Of The Cross and to Accept suffering.

Deep Acceptance is the antithesis of avoidance.

Suffering like anything else presents us with a choice — Accept it or don’t accept it — Acceptance or Non Acceptance

Jesus is giving us simple advice; To choose Acceptance as The Way.

The best way to give advice is by self-example and and what better example could he give than to die for us on The Cross.

He did no wrong but still Accepted His Fate (To suffer for us)

It was a profound message to us of the Power of Acceptance.

If we are to be honest as human beings we often fail in following this message (Very much myself!) and we tend on many occasions to avoid suffering.

Yet it is good to remember that just like carrying The Cross, we can fall but we always have the opportunity to get up again.

We replace suffering with avoidance in one form or another – indulging in material things like excessive eating, holidays, purchasing large houses or cars etc etc in the search for peace and happiness.

What we ultimately find is that this avoidance will not lead to true happiness and in fact can leave us quite empty – there are many people who will testify to this.

We climb the tree of avoidance to find we have climbed the wrong tree.

Yes it can bring short term pleasure and don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with that in itself, but as a template for living our lives and for true happiness it is not the answer.

The answer lies in The Way Of The Cross — The Power Of Acceptance.

• Next week I am going to write about ‘Everywhere and Nowhere’

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