CHRYSOSTOM SAYS that when St. Lucian was asked C by his persecutors, "Of what country art thou?' he replied, "I am a Christian,.

"What is your occupation?"

"I am a Christian.'

"Of what family?"

"I am a Christian."

To St. Lucian, Christ was all, whether of country, of occupation, or of family.

How revolutionary is the Cross!  It revolutionizes all our relationships, toward God, toward ourselves, toward others, toward all.  Once the Cross lays hold upon the Christian, he realizes how completely unhinged he has become from the whole of this present world.  The old life, the old world, the old ways and relationships--all are past.  "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new." Such is the conviction of the Cross that it "takes possession of us; it overcomes and absorbs us, and tears us ruthlessly from everything else; it becomes our sole object, and outside it nothing seems to touch us; those who do not understand it are strangers to us; those who attack it are our enemies; those who love and serve it with us are our true, our only family."

"Suppose ye," warned the Saviour, "that I am come to give peace on earth?  I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three.  The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law" (Luke 12:51-53).  There is no divider like Christ.  How He pierces and divides asunder!  He "came not to send peace, but a sword" (Matt. 10:34).  His Cross sunders the dearest of earthly ties; violates our deepest attachments; gives us a heart of steel to ourselves and the tenderest of hearts toward others.

The Corinthians were Paul's children in the faith.  In answer to their accusation that he did not love them, the great apostle and father said: "Receive us; we have wronged no man . . . for I have said before, that ye are in our hearts to die and live with you" (II Cor. 7:2, 3).  Note that Paul speaks "contrary to nature." Affectionate parents naturally want their children near by to live and die with them.  But Paul has already said to his Corinthian children: "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh." Then he adds this reason: "One died for all, therefore all died" (11 Cor. 5:14, R.V.). Paul therefore holds his children in his heart not to live and die with them, but "to die and live" with them.  He knows them as Christ's.  And if Christ's, they have been crucified and raised a new creation.  Paul loves the Corinthians, but not "in the flesh." He loves them through the Cross.  He knows ,.no man after the flesh."

Few Christian parents are governed by these simple implications of Calvary.  We are thinking of our good Christian homes.  Parents are often so wrapped up in their own children that they cannot bear to see them take the way of the Cross.  They shield them from the path of suffering.  Christian young people are often eager to go to all lengths for God and follow Christ to the ends of the earth, but the parents refuse to take the way of the Cross, either for themselves or for their children.  "No man ever yet hated his own flesh." But it is the first law of discipleship, said Jesus, that "if any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26).  Blood runs thick.  Christian parents who have gone to great lengths in consecration and who seem otherwise to be sacrificial and devoted followers of Christ, break down at this point.  Their fleshly sentiments make them, perhaps unconsciously, "the enemies of the cross of Christ." The Cross begins to lay hold of son or daughter and forthwith mother cries out: Be it far from thee, this shall never be unto thee--Pity thyself, spare thyself, come down from the cross and save thyself and us.  Happy the young person who so senses the serpent's subtle and feigned love in that dreadful hour that he can say: "Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto me: for thou mindest not the things of God but the things of men" (Matt. 16:23, R.V.).