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I picked the title of this blog to
emphasize the intentional aspect
of real Christianity.
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Negotiocrucis.blogspot.com
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I picked the title of this blog to emphasize the intentional aspect of real Christianity. Most of us are baptized as children, and therefore at some point need to make the intentional commitment to follow Jesus Christ from our hearts which the adult converts makes as a matter of course as they approach the Easter sacraments which join them to the Church. In a sense, the Cross which we receive marked on our foreheads as infants has to be taken up again intentionally every day we live. I was thinking that this experience is somewhat similar to the notion of going off to crusade in the Middle Ages. When you think of it, the notion of "Taking the Cross" (going on Crusade) was something spectacular. It was to give up the life you had, with the normal round of activities,- sleeping, evening, going to work, family relationships, etc.- in order to go to a far off country for love of Jesus, perhaps never to return, for the sake of protecting other Christians, and to see Jerusalem, and experience firsthand the churches and shrines where Jesus Christ had lived during his mortal life. The possibility was great that you might actually die on the road, but perhaps as a saint, or even a martyr for the Catholic faith. A Crusade was first of all a pilgrimage to maintain the rights of Christians in the place where Christianity was born, and became a lived metaphor for the spiritual journey that all of us Christians make, a journey that begins in our Baptism, and finishes when we pass through death with Christ and see at last the walls and gates of the new and eternal Jerusalem which is our true home.
The first step of going on Crusade was to "Take the Cross." One went before an authorized cleric, and made a solemn vow to go on Crusade. This vow could be fulfilled immediately or within a certain number of years. A cross ,usually sewn of cloth, was placed on your shoulder by the cleric. This is the first step: to move from thinking about a commitment to actually beginning to make it - the first step for the journey to Jerusalem. in a similar way, the active Christian must make the move from thinking about living a life in Christ to actually doing it. We who are members of the Catholic Church are pilgrims, armed with grace, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the personal presence of Jesus Christ, making our way through this life in order to come home to heaven, and seize the promises the Father has made to us in his Son.
Jesus said, “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me." (Luke 9:23) The imitation of Christ begins with taking up His Cross. I hope to discuss what that means in this blog.