Catholic World News News Feature

Papal audience: the Cross in the teaching of St. Paul October 29, 2008

Continuing his series of weekly catechetical talks on St. Paul, Pope Benedict XVI used his public audience on October 29 to speak on the Apostle's constant references to the Cross of Christ.

Speaking to a crowd of about 20,000 people in St. Peter's Square, the Holy Father asked a rhetorical question: "Why did St. Paul make the word Cross such a fundamental part of his preaching?" The answer, the Pontiff said, "is not difficult: the Cross reveals 'the power of God' which is different from human power; it reveals, in fact, His love."

St. Paul wrote that the Cross was a "stumbling block" for Jews who saw the apparent failure of Jesus as incompatible with their expectations of the Messiah. The Cross was "foolishness" to Greeks, who based their own hopes on reason and could not find a reasonable explanation for the idea that God was crucified. "And we see how this Greek logic has also become the common logic of our own time," Pope Benedict observed.

However, St. Paul saw the Cross not as a defeat, but as a revelation of "the power of God, which is different from human power." That power, the Pope added, "is all the power of God's limitless love." "God uses means and instruments that to human beings seem to be mere weakness," the Pope continued. "The crucified Christ reveals, on the one hand, the weakness of man and, on the other, the true power of God, in other words the gratuitousness of love; and precisely this complete gratuitousness of love is true wisdom."

In his second epistle to the Corinthians, the Pope pointed out, St. Paul drives home two points: that Jesus died for all mankind and that his Crucifixion reconciled sinners to God. To embrace that realization, the Apostle argued, is to accept Christ's offer of salvation by uniting ourselves with Jesus on the Cross. "In accepting the weakness of the Cross we experience the power of God's love for us," the Pope said.

St. Paul himself "renounced his own life" with the strength of his commitment to Christ, the Pope said. "This is something we must also do."