No Half Measures

What’s it going to take for us to remain with Christ? To stay with Him. To follow Him all the way to the cross, so as truly to share in His Resurrection?

We all know that our lives - like the Mass - will end with the sign of the cross, but will we receive that blessing? Or will we leave Him after communion?

We're all familiar with romantic films that roll the credits just after the main characters fall in love, which might work for the movies, but doesn't work in reality.

Christ demands the whole of our lives. No half measures. Isn't that why we fall away? Not because we can't give anything, but because it’s hard to give everything.

Not seldom, a movie about two people being taken up into one another’s arms will warm our heart and bring us joy. Good. For a little while.

But the films I choose to purchase - the ones I return to time and again - tend to be about how people stay with love underneath the burden of the cross. Only then do the credits roll. Usually after death.

Films like Of Gods and Men, Calvary, A Man For All Seasons, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Marie’s Story, and basically all of Terrence Malick’s films; the love in these movies goes beyond natural affection, into a persevering love that is stronger than death.

In each of those films the main characters have to make a decision. Will they leave the cross (Of Gods and Men)? Run from it (Calvary)? Betray it (A Man For All Seasons)? Hide from it (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl)? Or give up on it (Marie's Story)?

All of the characters in these films, however, do stay before the cross. They're amazing. That's why I watch their stories over and over. For encouragement.

Consider how God never rolls the credits in the lives of the Saints before the final blessing of the cross. Instead, only after they died with Christ on the cross did they enter into the glory of His Resurrection.

The love of the Saints may well have begun in natural romance, but it was by loving God unto death and giving Him everything that they were born into the divine love.

The promise of the Resurrection awaits those who not only hail Christ's entry into Jerusalem, but who stay with Him the whole way. +