SAUCIER — Clearly shaken

Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, when he was archbishop of Paris, told the story of three young teens having some fun at the expense of the local parish priest.

The boys each concocted a list of outrageous sins which, they would confess just for the sake of shock.

It didn’t take long for the priest to realize what was going on. When the third young man, who unlike his Catholic friends, was Jewish, entered the confessional, the priest quietly listened to his fraudulent declaration.

Then priest gave him a penance.

“I want you to go up to that crucifix in the sanctuary and say to it three times: ‘Jesus I know you died for me, but I don’t give a damn.”

The boy decided to carry the prank to the end, so he went to the crucifix and twice said, “Jesus, I know you died for me, but I don’t give a damn.”

But he couldn’t say it a third time, and overcome by emotion, he ran from the church.

Cardinal Lustiger admitted there were many “stories” about the power of the cross, but he knew this one to be true because he was that boy.

In a predominantly Christian culture, the cross is never far from sight. It tops church steeples, adorns necklaces and is inked in bold tattoos.

It has become a symbol of identity, but sometimes I fear this distracts from the power that young Lustiger encountered.

It’s the power slaves knew when they sang “Oh, ooh, sometimes it causes me to tremble / Tremble, tremble, tremble. ...”

Theologians today still argue about what happened on that cross on Golgotha Hill. Was Jesus’ death on the cross a ransom paid in full, Jesus taking on and paying the price for the sins of mankind, an act of justice or an appeasement of wrath?

Ultimately, this matters little unless we can stand before the cross and tremble, stand before it and allow it to affect our lives.

We need to see this symbol of imperial power and violence transformed into a divine revelation and death-defying love.

We need to look at the cross and confess that God is like this, a love that is willing to suffer, to forgive, to even die for us.

The great challenge of the cross is not to get the theology right, but to allow it to change us, to pull us into what N. T. Wright calls the “foot washing, fruit bearing, and world transforming mission of Jesus.”