"Who do you say I am?" The ultimate question the Lord asks all of us. We can only answer in truth what is in our hearts, if we have steadily contemplated - gazed steadily at him in the Scriptures and seen the paradoxes of God's choices, where he deliberately chooses what is 'least, lost, last and little' .

But no, we like Peter, look for the best in everything....least of all suffering! But the cross is the shape of everything we face in life. Without it Jesus is not present, for when God gave his ultimate revelation of who his Beloved Son is, he hung between heaven and earth, between two thieves/good and bad/ utterly abandoned even in that hour, My God, My God why have you forsaken me?

Our rational, calculating mind can never fully understand the mystery of the Cross! Such insight can only be discovered through contemplating the Person of Christ present in all the painful, tragic, sinful things where we do not want to look for God!

The Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the God-Man is at the same moment the worst thing in human history and the best thing in human history All of our life is a coincidence of opposites, says St. Bonaventure.