Pope Francis warned against the belief that the Cross can exist without Christ – or Christ without the Cross, in his homily on September 14, 2017, reported Vatican Radio.
His homily came as he celebrated daily Mass in the Casa Santa Marta for the first time after the summer break on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.
The Holy Father reflected on the cross as the “mystery of love,” according to Vatican Radio, stressing that the Cross must have Christ. Francis warned again two spiritual temptations related to the cross.
The first temptation is to think of Christ without a cross or to reduce him a “spiritual teacher” and the second is to think of a cross without Christ or to remove all hope in a type of “spiritual masochism”.
The Pope went on to say that it isn’t easy to understand the cross: “We advance in the mystery of love only through contemplation.”
