Christ the King: Overcoming Suffering

25 Christ the King: Overcoming Suffering

On the feast of Christ the King, at the very end of the church’s year, it’s useful to note just how many different sorts of crucifix there are. Go into a few different churches in your area and you’ll soon see quite a variety. Look also at the different types of cross around people’s necks, and crucifixes in homes and schools. Most of them don’t portray the reality of crucifixion very well at all. At the time of Jesus, crucifixion was a horrible form of capital punishment, but the crosses and crucifixes we usually see are made of gold, silver or wood and depict nothing of Jesus’ suffering. Most of them are shiny and expensive. Crucifixes have figures of Jesus on them, while crosses have none. Sadly, few of them really capture the Christian message of the cross…