by Joseph Raffa

Good Friday – the day the body of Christ was crucified. Little did the perpetrators know what they were setting in motion.  They believed they were protecting their positions of

power and authority.  Were they not the religious trustees of the day – the guardians of religious traditions?

And wasn’t all this threatened by this Galilean, this supposed performer of miracles, this healer of the sick?  Why, it was even said that he raised a man from the dead, brought him back to life

before his grieving family and friends.

My, how silly can you be.  It’s just not possible.  The dead are dead.  Or they were in those days without the techniques of modern medicine.  Now-a-days, with injections of drugs, heart

massage, artificial resuscitation and maybe even an electrical charge, it sometimes happens that the seemingly dead are brought

back to life.

Still, in those days it was some feat.  So the Galilean became quite a centre of interest wherever he walked, talked and performed his miracles.

What a nuisance he became to the religious authorities of the day.  Not intentionally of course.  He just went about doing his Father’s business, (as he so simply put it) dispensing love and

truth regardless of the consequences.

Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so bad if he didn’t mention in an offhand way that he and the Father were one.  In the eyes of the guardians of the day, this was blasphemy of the highest order.

So, off with his head or, as was the delightful custom in this particular place and time – off to the cross with him.  But wait – a whipping first, just to add injury to insult – mock the man

and what he represented, then leave him there, high in the air, exposed to the elements till nature took its course.

The trouble was, after it was all over, he stubbornly refused to stay dead.  No – he had to compound the situation by coming back to life, (just as he had forecast, mind you).  And everything

about the man, his life, his words, his actions, the miracles, the crucifixion, refused to die away too.

In fact, what the priests tried to destroy took on a new lease of life, spread from that centre of a beginning, to travel around the world.  Much like a tiny seed grows into a mighty Oak tree.

Which just goes to show that Divine love and truth are irrepressible elements in human nature and in the universe – that they will persist as long as the universe and life persists.

And even beyond that for they have their source in that which is imperishable, in that which is sacred and unprofaned.

Christ came from that source, was one with it as indeed all things and all life are one with it.  All he did was speak the truth and for that he was crucified, by the blind, the arrogant

and the ignorant.

But the spark that took off then is with us still.  It burns like a flame in the hearts of those who travel inwards, who rediscover the Cosmic Christ within.

That’s what it was all about – to bring mankind together with truth, love and the Universal Nature.  So the cross, instead of signifying the end became a guiding beacon, a signpost for

mankind to rediscover itself, to disentangle itself from its home in time and find its true home in that strange nature beyond

space and time.

From Beyond the Cross, The Christ Collection by Joseph Raffa

Available in various links from

books2read.com/u/3yZA8p