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For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;
but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness. In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. |
What shall we call the Precious and Life-giving Cross, then? Do we dare label it a token of friendship? Would this be foolishness in the eyes of the world or even an offense in the eyes of Christians? Would it be understatement to the point of absurdity? .... even unto blasphemy? It depends on how we understand friendship.
The Latin word for friendship, amicitia, pointed to the highest ideals of Roman culture in Jesus' time. In one of his famous essays, De Amicitia, the Roman senator, Cicero, wrote that amicitia
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can only exist between good men .... We mean then by the "good"
those whose actions and lives leave no question as to their honor, purity, equity, and liberality; who are free from greed, lust, and violence; and who have the courage of their convictions. |
The followers of Jesus would come to understand that they too were called to this highest pursuit. Indeed, they would learn that such was the reason for the most remarkable act of all human history, which is the entrance of God into the human life scene.
The Church Fathers explored this subject at length. St. Athanasius wrote that the portrait of humankind had been defaced through sin, but no human was worthy to sit for this portrait that it might be restored. A century earlier, Origen wrote that the Emperor's Image had been stamped upon silver coins, but the gritty world had reduced them to indecipherable slugs. We no longer knew what we were made to be. We had forgotten who we were. So the Great Emperor sent His Son, the Heir, that the Divine Image might be restored. He would set His countenance upon our silver. He would sit for the portrait of humanity.
We should not be startled or unsettled that pagans also felt this yearning. Did not St. Paul comment that God writes His commands on the fleshly tablets of our hearts before He writes them on stone tablets (2 Cor 3:3)? Are we not made in God's Image from our conception and therefore always longing to be united to the family resemblance and honor?
During Jesus lifetime, friendship was understood to be the spiritual journey that could lead to human excellence. Should a friend fall into greed, abandoning decent liberality; should a friend be given to violence or abuse of others; should a friend fall into pornography or illicit sex; then this person is no longer your friend. Far from it! For such a one has disfigured the true image of your friend. He has betrayed both you and himself. St. Paul wrote,
| But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you. (Eph 5:3) |
By contrast, forgiveness is never granted to the proud spirit who demands: "Accept me as I am!" .... as if our lowest and basest moments could ever be who we really are. In the case of a Christian who sins, Jesus directs us:
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.... go and tell him his fault .... if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother.
But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican. (Mt 18:17) |
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And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. (Rom 12:2) |
In a public show of commitment to amicitia
some Romans would exchange rings.
What is the sign God has given us to be a token of His Most Holy Friendship?
It is the Precious and Life-giving Cross.
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After three months we sailed in an Alexandrian ship whose figurehead was the Twin Brothers,
which had wintered at the island. And landing at Syracuse, we stayed three days. (Acts 28:11) |
During the first century, the story of Damon and Pythias was universally reverenced as an ideal of amicitia — central to the beliefs of the Pythagorean School of Philosophy and (after the Resurrection) an essence of Christian life. This is the lens through which early Christians viewed the Cross and the Atonement.
During the first century everyone knew the story of this friendship. Pythias is found guilty of plotting the overthrow of the cruel tyrant of Syracuse, Dionysius I and sentenced to death. Accepting his fate, he asked the tyrant if he might first go home, settle his affairs, and bid goodbye to his family. The king refused .... until Pythias' friend, Damon, offered himself as a ransom awaiting his friend's return. The day of execution came, but Pythias is nowhere to be seen. Damon is taken to the place of beheading. At the last minute his friend appears explaining that pirates had overtaken his ship and that he had escaped, then swimming for his life strove to come to his place of execution that Damon might be spared. So moved was Dionysius that he released them both.
As Irenaeus wrote, all humankind had been held thrall by the cruel prince of this world. But then a ransom was offered that we might be released. The evil one would gladly agree. To receive the Lord, the Heir, the Prince of Heaven? And let the rest go? Of course! But in so doing Hell attempted to hold that One in all humanity Whom it could not.
What would be the place of execution for the Son and Heir of Heaven? It would be the most hated symbol of the universal Jewish imagination: the Cross. Following a mass revolt in Sepphoris in the year 4 B.C., four years before the birth of Christ and three miles from Nazareth, the Roman General Varus ordered the crucifixion of 2,000 Jews. As if this enormity were not heinous enough, he also ordered that the family of each condemned man be butchered at the foot of his cross as he died. No symbol in all Jewry could surpass the Cross in expressing the Jewish people's captivity and hopelessness. No symbol could be more hated. It would be the Cross to which the Son of God would ascend. He would be the ransom.
Here is friendship taken to a level far surpassing the ideals of Antiquity, for God Himself declared,
| Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down His life for his friends. (Jn 15:13) |
But above all, this:
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A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another;
even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (Jn 13:34) |
No one would have missed the reference to Damon and Pythias, which described a life for a life, not a death for a life. And this was how the Early Church understood the Cross: an offering of life, not an offering up of death:
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"For even the Son of Man did not come to be served,
but to serve, and to give His Life as a ransom for many." (Mk 10:45) |
During the early centuries, His ransom was seen only in terms of life. Following the Risen Christ's teachings, the Apostles understood that Jesus, the Son of God, was the Eternal Word, the Logos, the Instrument of Creation, Life itself — a Life so abundant that it shattered the House of Death. St. Athanasius wrote that the Incarnation of God was so potent a shock that His mere touching the physical Creation flipped the telos (or blueprint) of our world from death to life (De Incarnatione). In His Transfiguration, He appears with the holy ones who never tasted death, Elijah and Moses. By virtue of the Son of God's victory over death in the form of a human, a limit has been removed, once for all.
We must never forget, however, that this is the starting point, not the purpose and end of His self-offering. Friendship has been offered. A ransom has been offered to many. But who will accept it? Who will enter into this invitation of friendship? Will we? Should we fall into greed or covetousness or violence or that failing we find everywhere, lust, we would then fall beneath the level of Divine friendship. We would lose our opportunity. For we would no longer be deemed His friends:
| You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. (Jn 15:14) |
Tragically, during the eleventh century an Italian monk named Anselmo invented a new theology of Atonement. Rather than ransom and friendship, he envisioned an angry God, Who demanded payment for an unpayable debt. His Son would have to be sacrificed to satisfy His implacable demand. This theology would become the starting point of a new pattern of worship within the recently launched Roman Catholic Church. No one could turn the Roman bishops back from their program of innovation, for they had departed from the friendship of the ancient Episcopate effecting a schism from the Church Jesus had founded. And these changes would be both radical and profound. An all-bachelor diocesan priesthood would be instituted (unheard of in Church history). The Eucharist would no longer be called the Fractio panis (the Breaking of bread), but another term would be encouraged, the Oblatio (the Sacrifice). Friendship with Jesus associated with the term "Love Feast" (agape) would be supplanted by the idea of the sacrifice of the Mass, a phrase "not necessarily connected" (Catholic Encyclopedia, "Sacrifice of the Mass"). The idea of Heavenly Banquet and the idea of Sacrifice would eventually be separated in formal decrees centuries later:
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.... the Church intends the Mass to be regarded as a "true and proper sacrifice",
and will not tolerate the idea that the sacrifice is identical with Holy Communion. (Council of Trent) |
Now let us be clear. Without question, the Lord's Body is our Heavenly Bread. Without question, His Blood is our Heavenly Drink. But the emphasis is unitive, of our becoming One with Him as He and the Father are One:
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..... that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You;
that they also may be one in Us. (Jn 17:21) |
The ancient Church's Eucharist, tracing back to the 400s A.D., emphasized not butchery, but rather a continuation of the Heavenly Banquet enjoyed by the Apostles in the Upper Room. In our earliest Eucharistic Prayer, we read,
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"all those things which have come to pass for us: the Cross, the Tomb,
the Resurrection on the Third Day, the Ascension into Heaven, and the Second and Glorious Coming ... " |
He has called us to be His friends (Jn 15:11ff). He has prepared a place for us (Jn 14:2ff) in the celestial climes of Eternal Light and Life. The King's Table is a Marriage Banquet uniting Heaven and Earth "that God may be all in all" (1 Cor 15:28). Therefore, let us boldly answer the call of St. Gregory the Great offering a Divine affirmative:
| Be friends of God! |