This weekend we hear these profound words of St. Paul: May I never boast of anything but the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ! Through it, the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. We are called to make these words our own. May we also never boast of anything but the Cross. God has revealed to us through Jesus that the primary task given to us in this lifetime is to bear the cross given to us like Jesus, with nobility and dignity. It is through the cross that life presents to us that we find transformation. Being determined to carry our Cross as Christ did, brings about this transformation. This requires us, then, to take time and reflect on how Jesus carried the Cross that was given to Him. He carried it without complaint or sadness. He voluntarily embraced the Cross and did not consider it to be any kind of punishment. He saw that the Cross given to Him was an instrument which He could use to show His followers truly how to live. His voluntary acceptance of the Cross declared for all time that the struggles in life can be truly transformative if only humans voluntarily embrace them with dignity and grace.

This weekend we also hear these beautiful words from John’s Gospel: Yes, God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him may not die but may have eternal life. We do well to spend some time thinking about these words. They express a truth which is truly wondrous and eradicate any fear of death, filling us with hope.

Think about these words and ask yourself: Do I really believe that God loves me? These words express the belief that God loves us SO MUCH that He came Himself to show us how to live and to assure us of our immortality.

How we live allows us to embrace the truth of these words. The saints have found that the more they tried to live like Jesus lived the more these words resonated with them. We must remember that we can only experience what we truly believe. In short this means that if we truly want to experience eternal life we have to believe that it is true and that God, Himself, has shown us this truth.

This is true of all things in life. We cannot truly love another if we don’t feel and realize that not only are we loved but that we are loveable.