When St. Paul entered the Areopagus on his missionary journey to Athens, one can almost imagine the bewilderment of his listeners. To the Athenians—steeped in philosophy, beauty, and the pursuit of lofty ideals—this foreigner proclaimed something unthinkable: that the true God had appointed one Man to suffer, not in honor or grandeur, but in utter humiliation upon a Cross.
This moment reveals the paradox at the very heart of Catholicism. The Cross, an instrument of shame, has become the sign of glory; the place of death has become the source of life. In Christ’s crucifixion, the Cross is perfected as the supreme act of love and sacrifice. Yet the Cross is not only Christ’s—it is ours. He commands His disciples, and us, to deny ourselves and take up our cross.
This is what we, as Christian men, must do in a post-Christian world. To be a countersign to our culture and to draw it back toward Christ, we must begin with self-denial and the daily bearing of our personal crosses. Such a life stands in radical opposition to what the world urges us to desire.
Nowhere is this contrast more evident than in the modern debate over euthanasia, or Medical Aid in Dying (MAID). In the United States, MAID is legal in just ten states and the District of Columbia, yet between 1998 and 2020, over 5,000 people ended their lives under this practice,. The logic behind MAID is clear: ours is a culture of comfort, where suffering must be avoided at any cost—even at the cost of life itself. But this is precisely the opposite of the Cross. Where Christ embraced suffering in love, our culture flees from it in fear. What the Cross calls courage, the world calls foolishness; what the Cross calls sacrifice, the world calls waste.
As Christian men, we must resist this fear. In a society terrified of suffering, we are called to embrace it—patiently, faithfully, and redemptively. This may mean losing a job for standing by our convictions, facing ridicule for speaking truth, or enduring strained relationships because of fidelity to Christ. Yet these trials, however heavy, are not meaningless. They are our share in the Cross, our path to holiness, and our witness to a world that desperately needs to see the radical love of God.Therefore, brothers, take courage. Deny yourselves. Shoulder your cross. And let your lives be the countersign that Christ crucified remains, as St. Paul declared, “a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, the power of God and the wisdom of God.” Just as the Cross confounded the pagans and Jews of Christ’s time, so too must it confound the idols of our own time.
