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the Cross of Jesus Christ. It is the central patch of cloth from which the pattern proceeds. It is also where the pattern returns. However, seeing this pattern requires ongoing conversion.

We need the eyes that can only come through living faith. We need the strength to pull ourselves up by grasping the wood. It is only there where we begin to see that the threads all form a pattern woven by love.

The Early Christian Fathers beautifully reflected upon the Cross in so many of their writings. The Cross was often presented as a “second tree” at which the new creation began again in Jesus Christ. On that Cross, the Living Word, through whom the Universe was created, re-created it all anew. One early monk, Theodore the Studite, an eighth century Abbot of the undivided Church of the First Christian Millennium, once proclaimed:

“How precious the gift of the cross, how splendid to contemplate! In the cross there is no mingling of good and evil, as in the tree of paradise: it is wholly beautiful to behold and good to taste. The fruit of this tree is not death but life, not darkness but light. This tree does not cast us out of paradise, but opens the way for our return.

“This was the tree on which Christ, like a King on a chariot, destroyed the devil, the Lord of death, and freed the human race from his tyranny. This was the tree upon which the Lord, like a brave warrior wounded in hands, feet and side, healed the wounds of sin that the evil serpent had inflicted on our nature.

“A tree once caused our death but now a tree brings life. Once deceived by a tree, we have now repelled the cunning serpent by a tree. What an astonishing transformation! That death should become life, that decay should become immortality- that shame should become glory!”

A Deacon of that undivided Church named Ephrem lived in the fourth century in Edessa, Syria. He was in love this wounded warrior of Love, Jesus Christ. He with his preaching, proclaimed the truth of this Divine design. He also wrote extraordinary hymns which gained him a title, still mentioned in the Syriac Liturgy to this day -- "the Harp of the Holy Spirit”. In one of his powerful sermons, Deacon Ephrem wrote these words concerning the Cross:

“He who was also the carpenters glorious son set up his cross above deaths’ all consuming jaws, and led the human race into the dwelling place of life. Since a tree had brought about the downfall of mankind, it was upon a tree that mankind crossed over to the realm of life.

“Bitter was the branch that had once been grafted upon that ancient tree, but sweet the young shoot that has now been grafted in, the shoot in which we are meant to recognize the Lord whom no creature can resist. We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death, like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living.

“We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead. Come then, my brothers and sisters, let us offer our Lord the great and all embracing sacrifice of our love and our lives”

So what do the story of the preacher and the message of these early Christian writers have in common?

In each of our own lives we will experience disappointment. We will suffer. We will make wrong choices. We will experience the consequences. The sheer weight of the “stuff of life” can sometimes reduce us to figuratively crawling. However, whether we see it or not at the time, there really is a Divine Design. The way to standing back upright, and being able to discern the pattern, is living faith in Jesus Christ.

As we pull ourselves up on the frame of His Cross we can come to see that what once seemed to be strands, pieces of cloth, with no apparent pattern, are actually a part of this design being woven from the center. In Jesus Christ we can find the fullness of God’s plan. In Him –and through Him – and with Him- we are in the process of being recreated.

So too, is the whole universe.

He is the center from which the pattern emanates and to which it will all return. There really is a Divine Design.


Deacon Fournier is writing a series of reflections on daily Catholic Christian living.Catholic Online will soon be offering these reflections to all those who subscribe to a free newsletter.


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Deacon Keith Fournier asks that you join with us and help in this vital mission by sending this article to your family, friends, and neighbors and adding our link (www.catholic.org) to your own website, blog or social network. Let us broadcast, we are PROUD TO BE CATHOLIC!

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