The following of the Crucified

Death... occurs in the whole of life and reaches its completion only at the end. Hence... it was legitimate for Christian piety in its entire history to seek to realize the following of the Crucified in Christian life, in the acceptance of everything that Christian usage even up to the present time describes as the “cross”: the experiences of human frailty, of sickness, of disappointments, of the nonfulfilment of our expectations, and so on. What occurs in all this is part of man’s dying, of the destruction of life’s tangible goods. In all these brief moments of dying in instalments we are faced with the question of how we are to cope with them: whether we merely protest, merely despair (even for brief moments), become cynical and cling all the more desperately and absolutely to what has not yet been taken from us — or whether we abandon with resignation what is taken from us, accept twilight as promise of an eternal Christmas full of light, regard slight breakdowns as events of grace. If in this second way... we take the cross on ourselves daily, we are accomplishing part of the following of the Crucified, we are practising faith and living hope in which death is accepted as the advent of eternal life, and the following of Jesus, the Crucified, reaches its completion.

Quote: Karl Rahner, “Following the Crucified”, Theological Investigations 18 (1984) 169–170.