Cardinal Müller: Christians defined by taking up the cross ‘and not laying it down’

‘We want to remain faithful to the cross of Jesus, even if we are threatened by those in power over the world,’ said Cardinal Müller.

(PerMariam) — “Christianity is not a mere cultural program” but “total devotion to the triune God,” Cardinal Gerhard Müller stated recently.

Delivering a homily on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (September 14) Cdl. Müller extolled the centrality of the cross for Christianity. “We bow our knees before the name of Jesus alone. We confess our faith in him, who was obedient to the point of death on the cross. ‘For Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.’”

Cdl. Müller interviewed by Michael Haynes in Spring 2024.

Cdl. Müller – who has been outspoken against efforts to promote international policies such as the U.N. Agenda 2030, and against moves to introduce heterodoxy in the Catholic Church – urged Catholics not to waver in their beliefs.

“All those who historically once used their power over life and death against Jesus and persecuted His disciples over the course of time are now forgotten…That is why we want to remain faithful to the cross of Jesus, even if we are threatened by those in power over the world.”

The former prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith spoke at a Mass celebrated in Ottawa’s St. Clement Parish, run by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP), as part of a recent series of engagements in Canada.

By kind permission of His Eminence, the text of his homily is reproduced in full below.

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Solemnity of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross on September.

The day after the consecration of the Constantinian Basilica over the Holy Sepulchre in 335 AD, the faithful in Jerusalem were shown the Holy Cross of Christ, which St. Helena, the emperor's mother, had found. So we still celebrate the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross every September 14th.

It not only reminds us of the historical date of a church consecration. The Divine Liturgy actually connects us with the historical event of cosmic significance: the crucifixion of Jesus on Golgotha.

For Christ died on the cross to redeem all of humanity from their sins and from eternal death, i.e. a sad shadow existence after the earthly path of life without the light of loving fellowship with our Creator and Perfecter. When we encounter the cross of Jesus in our homes, in church and in public in view of its pictorial and figurative representation, we as disciples of Jesus think of His words with which He indicated His saving death: “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” (John 12:32).

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We must therefore never – neither in Jerusalem on the Temple Mount in front of the Muslims nor anywhere else in the world – lay down the cross of Jesus and deny Jesus. For His words remain in our ears and hearts when He says: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Taking up one's cross and not laying it down - that is what defines the Christian of the 21st century.

We should not confess it in the sense of the symbolism of a civil religion, in order to justify ourselves by referring to Christian values as the roots of Western culture in the face of an environment that has been de-christianized to the core. Christianity is not a mere cultural program, although it can become the root of all humanity for every culture. And it is not just ethics either, although it is also the root of all ethics of love of God and our neighbor.

Our Christian faith is total devotion to the triune God in the love that the Father of Jesus Christ has poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom 5:5). When we look at Christ on the cross, we are filled with immediate certainty with the eternal significance of every human life.

Everyone here in our circle – you and I, all of us together and each of us individually – should feel that we are directly addressed as people created in God's image and likeness in our lives and thoughts, hopes and sufferings, in our relationships with our loved ones and our enemies, when Jesus says: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).

It is not the love of romantic feelings or the calculated sympathy according to the rule of “do ut des,” from whose joints nihilism peeks out or cynicism bubbles up poisonously. The love of God is redeeming and re-creative because God gains nothing and loses nothing when He communicates Himself to us in the cross and in the resurrection of His Son. He gives Himself to us as the truth through which we recognize Him, and the life in which we become one with Him.

Anyone who thinks according to the standards of the world and therefore declares money and fame, power and luxury to be their elixir of life must turn away in disappointment and horror from a God on the cross. And anyone who defines God religiously and philosophically as absolute superiority and self-sufficient thinking will be horrified by the “word of the cross” (1 Cor 1:18) as an expression of an immature or primitive idea of God.

"But we preach Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power and wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." (1 Cor 1:22-25).

In view of the overwhelming power of political and ideological atheism and the religiously motivated hostility against the Church of Christ throughout the world, the cause of Christ seems lost - as it once was on Golgotha, when Jesus was mocked with the cynical words: “If you are the Son of God, then come down from the cross!... then we will believe in him” (Mt 27:40.42). According to human criteria, the Church is fighting a losing battle.

But all those who historically once used their power over life and death against Jesus and persecuted His disciples over the course of time are now forgotten, or have a bad memory and had to answer in court before the just and yet forgiving God. But Jesus lives. He is the only one who can overcome our death and open the hearts of our persecutors to His love.

That is why we want to remain faithful to the cross of Jesus, even if we are threatened by those in power over the world.

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That is why we want to remain faithful to the cross of Jesus, even if we are ridiculed as medieval by those in power over people's thoughts and living conditions, or if we are attacked and demotivated within the church by secular fellow Christians as being out of touch with the times and out of touch with reality.

We bow our knees before the name of Jesus alone. We confess our faith in Him, who was obedient to the point of death on the cross. “For Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:11).

On the feast of the exaltation of the cross of Jesus Christ as a sign of salvation for every person, we pray in joyful certainty.

In the cross there is salvation, in the cross there is life, in the cross there is hope. Amen.

Gerhard Card. Müller