I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
All Commentaries on Galatians 2:20 Go To Galatians 2
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. By baptism I am crucified with Christ, and dead to sin and the law; I am cut off from the old tree, and grafted as a new branch into the new tree of the Cross of Christ, from which I draw a new life, so that it is not so much I that live but Christ who lives in me. It is not the law, not nature, not concupiscence, not my own will that now drives me into action; but Christ"s grace is now, as it were, my soul, and the cause of all virtuous living, and the wellspring of humility, fortitude, Wisdom of Solomon , joy, peace, and all virtues. So Jerome, Chrysostom, Anselm. Gregory (Hom32in Evan.) says. "We leave ourselves, we deny ourselves when we change what we were in the old Prayer of Manasseh , and strive for what we are called in the new. Think how Paul denied himself when he said, "It is not I that live." The cruel persecutor was dead, the pious preacher had begun to live; for if he were himself, he would not be pious. But if he asserts that it is not he that lives, let him tell us whence it is that he preaches holiness in his teaching of the truth. He adds "Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." It is as if he said plainly: "As far as I am concerned, I am dead, for I do not live after the flesh; but yet I am not really dead, for I live spiritually in Christ." " So too Chrysostom writes: "See and admire an exact explanation of life. Since he had given himself wholly to Christ and His Cross, and did everything at His command, he did not say, "I live to Christ," but, what is much more, "Christ liveth in me." " So too S. Jerome. "He who once lived as a persecutor and under the law, lives no longer. But Christ liveth in him as Wisdom of Solomon , fortitude, peace, joy, and all virtues. He who has not these cannot say, "Christ liveth in me." "
S. Bernard (Serm7 in Quad.) says: These words of Paul are as if he should say: "To all other things I am dead; I do not feel them, I pay them no attention, I care not for them. Whatever, however, is Christ"s finds me alive and ready. For if I can do nothing else, at all events I can feel. Whatever makes for his honour pleases me, what against it displeases. Yea, it is not I that live, it is Christ that lives in me." "
It is Christ then, that teaches, preaches, prays, works, suffers in me, says S. Paul, so much so that I seem to be changed into Christ and Christ into me. "Each one," says S. Augustine (in Ep. Joan. tract2), "is what he loves. If thou lovest earth, thou will be earthly; if thou lovest God, thou wilt be God." Or, as S. Dionysius puts it, "Love changes the lover into what he loves." Cf. Hosea 9:10: "Their abominations were according as they loved."
The metaphor of the old tree and the new, the old life and the new, used here by S. Paul, is paralleled by that used in Rom. vi, where he speaks of our being planted, buried, crucified, dead, and risen, together with Christ. So S. Ignatius wrote to the Romans , "My love was crucified" —my love, my life, my soul, my whole being was crucified when Christ suffered.
Notice here four properties of love. (1.) According to Dionysius (de Divin. Nomin. c4), "love is a unifying force." This the Apostle touches in the words: "I am crucified with Christ;" I am united to, and am as it were one with Christ crucified. (2.) The second property of love is mutual inherence, which links God and man in the bonds of mutual love, and causes each to will what the other wills, and to say with the Bride in Song vi3: "I am my beloved"s, and my beloved is mine." This too S. Paul alludes to when he says that "he is in Christ, and Christ in him." (3.) The third property is to turn the thoughts always in the same direction. For love, as a bond between minds, necessarily governs the thoughts of the mind. This S. Paul touches in the words, "I live," and "Christ liveth," i.e, the same life of memory, understanding, and will. (4.) The fourth is ecstasy. "Divine love," says Dionysius (ubi supra), "causes ecstasy; it takes lovers out of themselves, so that they are no longer their own masters, but pass under the yoke of what they love. Hence the exclamation of Paul, when on fire with love and dominated by it: "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Like a true lover, he was beside himself. We may even venture to say that a lover passes all bounds of self, and can do everything for the greatness of his love, because it makes him reach out in every direction and lay hold of everything." Nay, ecstatic love laid hold on God Himself, and made Him communicate Himself to His creatures, and still more strongly, when it led Him to ally the Person of the Word to human nature in the Incarnation (Phil. ii7). It was ecstasy, therefore, which made the Word flesh, crucified It, and gave It the likeness of sin, because we were sinners and condemned to death; for it was out of His great, nay, His ecstatic love that Christ took all that we are, sin only excepted.
This ecstasy of love may almost be said to have changed the heart of Paul into the heart of Christ, just as we read about S. Catherine of Sienna, that her ardent love for Christ made her ask Him to remove her own heart and give her His; whereupon He granted her petition, and in place of her own gave her a new Christ-like heart. So too S. Chrysostom (Hom23in Ep. ad Rom.), after quoting, these words of Paul"s, went on to say: "And so the heart of Paul was the heart of Christ, the tablets of the Holy Spirit, a roll written on by charity." A little before he had called the heart of Paul, "the heart of the world," and given this explanation of the term: "His heart was so enlarged that in it was room for whole cities and peoples and tribes. For "my heart," he says, "is enlarged." Nevertheless, however large it was, the love which enlarged it often brought it anguish. "Out of much tribulation and sorrow," he says, "have I written unto you;" and I would fain see that heart melted, burning with love of them that they are perishing, bringing forth children. A heart that sees God is higher than the heavens, wider than the world, brighter than the rays of the sun, hotter than fire, harder than adamant, that sends forth streams of living water, a springing well, that waters not the face of the earth but the souls of men."
This ecstasy has often been experienced by saints who have been overcome by the love of Christ. S. Dominic, when elevating the Body of Christ in the Mass, was carried aloft, and his body, catching the fire with which his soul was consumed, was kindled as it were into a flame, whilst he ascended to be united to Christ, his love. S. Francis too conceived in his mind such ardour, as S. Bonaventura says, from the seraph who appeared to him at night, that his body was wonderfully changed from that of an earthly man to a heavenly spirit, and into an image of the Crucified: bearing the five wounds of the Saviour, and the five marks burnt into him by the fire of the love of Christ, he became a marvel to the world.
Well too says S. Gregory of Nyssa (Hom15 in Cant.): ""To me to live is Christ." By these words the Apostle not only exclaims that in him live no human affections, such as pride, fear, lust, grief, anger, timidity, audacity, recollection of injuries, envies, desire of revenge, of money, of honour, or of glory, but that all these being killed, He only remains who is none of these, who is sanctification, purity, immortality, and light and truth, who feeds among the lilies in the glories of His saints."
So did Andrew the Apostle joyfully embrace the Cross. When he was condemned by geas, Proconsul of Achaia, to be crucified for preaching the Cross, he exclaimed, as he approached the cross prepared for him: "0 noble cross, long desired, ardently loved, ever sought, already foreseen, gaily and gladly do I come to thee; may my Master, who hung on thee, welcome me, His disciple, that through thee I may come to Him who through thee redeemed me." So saluting the cross, and making his prayer, he stripped off his garments and surrendered himself to his executioners, who thereupon tied him with ropes to the cross and raised him aloft. There he hung for two days and taught the people, till, finally, after having asked the Lord that he might not be taken down from the cross, he was surrounded with a glorious light from heaven, and when the light departed he gave up the ghost. All this is related in his Acts , which are thoroughly trustworthy.
So too S. Peter, when condemned by Nero to the cross, asked and obtained that he might be crucified, not like his Master, but with his head downwards.
S. Philip the Apostle preached the faith to the Scythians at Hierapolis, a city of Asia, during the reign of the Emperor Claudius; and having baptized many of them, he was at length crucified by the heathens and stoned, and so died a blessed martyr, as Eusebius relates, and, following him, Baronius.
When S. Bartholomew the Apostle had spread the Gospel through Lycaonia, in Greater Armenia, when Astyax was king, and had converted a temple of Ashtaroth in Lower India into a temple of the true God, and had baptized King Polemius and all his subjects, he was seized shortly afterwards, and after being beaten with sticks was crucified, and then flayed alive. On the twenty-fourth day afterwards he was beheaded, and so died.
At Rome, when Decius and Valerian were emperors, Pope Xystus was thrown into the Tullian prison and afterwards crucified. Prudentius (Hymn2de S. Laurentio) thus alludes to this: "When Xystus was already fastened to the cross he said prophetically to Laurence, when he saw him standing weeping at the foot of his cross: "Cease to weep for me; I go before thee, my brother. In three days thou shalt follow me." "
S. Dionysius the Areopagite was scourged at Paris in the time of the Emperor Hadrian, then tortured by fire and thrown to the wild beasts, without suffering any harm. He was then raised on a cross, from which he was taken down and again scourged, after which his head was cut off, and he carried it in his own hands for two miles. Baronius (in Martyrol. Od9).
When S. Calliopus, a devout youth, was invited to a banquet spread in honour of the gods, he replied: "I am a Christian; I worship Christ with fastings, and it is not lawful for a Christian mouth to receive what has been offered to infamous and unclean idols." The governor, on hearing this, ordered him to be cruelly scourged, and then bade him give up his foolish craze, obey the decrees of the emperors, sacrifice to the gods, and so save his life, otherwise he should be crucified like his Master. Calliopus replied: "I wonder at your impudence; you have been repeatedly told that I am a Christian, and that when a Christian dies he will live with Christ, yet you impudently fight against the truth. Hasten for me the same death as any Master bore." When the governor saw that he was not to be shaken from his purpose, he gave sentence that he should be crucified on the Friday in Holy Week. When his mother heard of this, she bribed the soldiers to crucify her son with his head downwards, which was done. When he died a voice was heard from heaven: "Come, thou citizen of Christ"s kingdom and fellow-heir of the holy angels." All this is related in his Life by Surius (April7).
Wonderful, too, was the love of the Cross shown by a mere boy, S. Wernher, and wonderful was his martyrdom by crucifixion. Having confessed and made his Communion, he was secretly taken by the Jews, and on Good Friday, in imitation of Christ, and out of hatred to Him, tied to a wooden pillar. There he was cruelly scourged, cut about with a knife in every part of his body, tortured with pincers, so that he seemed to be dead. The holy boy, however, lingered three days, hanging from the pillar, till the blood ceased to flow, when, after bearing his sufferings with the utmost patience, he gave up his spirit to Christ, crucified to the glory of God. See the account of him in Surius (April2). For similar cruelties on the part of the Jews, see Socrates (Hist. lib. vii. c16).
Ado (Martyrol. May22), and, following him, Baronius (A.D440), relates a similar story of a holy maiden named Julia, who was brought before Felix, and urged by every blandishment to sacrifice to idols. On her refusal she was beaten by the hands of the servants, tortured by means of her hair, scourged, and crucified. When she gave up the ghost a dove left her mouth and flew to heaven. Who shall find a brave woman? Her price is far off, yea, from the ends of the earth.
Lately in Japan six Franciscans, three of our Order, and seventeen Japanese laymen, among them a lad, Aloysius, of twelve years, and another, Antonius, of thirteen, were, by order of King Taicosama, crucified, and pierced with a sword in the right side. They thus joyfully suffered the agonies of martyrdom.
Who loved me and gave Himself for me. Note the use of the singular. It is not us nor for us, but me and for me. Paul speaks thus: (1.) because of the greatness and the sweetness of his love; (2.) because he felt himself the first of sinners; (3.) because each one owes thanks to Christ for His death, just as though Christ had died for him only. "Happy, thrice happy Hebrews ," says S. Jerome, "who can say, because Christ lives in him, in every thought and work, "I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me." "
