Take Up Your Cross

Take Up Your Cross

Teresa of Ávila, whose feast is October 15, wrote extensively about the interior life of prayer and discipleship. She described the 'interior castle' of the soul as a place entered through prayer and exited through service. Her most famous description of the demands of following Christ: 'Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which He blesses all the world.' This is cross-bearing: the willingness to be the physical expression of Christ's presence in the world.

Mark 8:34's three-part call — deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me — is placed immediately after Peter's confession (verse 29) and immediately before the first passion prediction (verse 31). Jesus is shaping the meaning of Messiahship and discipleship together: the Messiah will suffer and die, and the disciple will share in that suffering and death. 'Deny yourself' — the center of self is dethroned. 'Take up your cross' — the Roman death implement, carried through the streets to a public execution, was a symbol that everyone understood. The disciple's cross is not illness or difficulty; it is the voluntary suffering that comes from following Jesus. 'Follow me' — the movement is forward, into the suffering that He entered first. The cross leads where He went.