The Crux of the Matter

While checking the offerings of an online movie service, I noted that a number of James Bond movies showed up as currently popular. I didn’t watch any, opting to go to bed instead. But as I lay there, before falling asleep, my mind mulled over some of the movie titles, and I remembered that the movie, The World is Not Enough, was based on the supposed motto of Bond’s family: Orbis non sufficit, (Latin for, “The world is not enough”). Interestingly, the motto actually did belong to a real Bond, Sir Thomas Bond of the 1600s.

From there, my mind roamed through other mottoes I knew:

• • • Honi soit qui mal y pense. The motto of the British Order of the Garter, which means, “Shamed be the one who thinks evil of this.” Supposedly spoken by King Edward III when he put his nieces’ garter on his own leg, sparing her embarrassment when it fell down from her leg during a dance. It also appears on the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom.
    • Dieu et mon droit. “God and my right,” said to have been Richard I’s battle cry. Also on the UK royal coat of arms.
    • E pluribus unum. A little more familiar to Americans, our national motto proclaims we are “out of many, one.”
    • Novus ordo seclorum. The second US motto, found on our dollar bills and on the Great Seal of the United States, it means, “New world order.” Okay, maybe that’s a little scary, but the designers meant well.

Finally, my mind being exhausted by the exercise, I fell asleep, but not before wishing my family had a cool Latin motto, too.

But as I remembered when I woke up, we do. The Eddy family has an official crest, registered in English books of Heraldry. Our crest is this:

What’s really cool about the coat of arms is that it is very Christian in nature. First, there are the crossed sword and cross above. Then there are the three aged pilgrims on the crest (I used to tell my dad they represented him; now I find that they represent me). But most exciting of all is the Latin motto underneath: Crux mihi grata quies, which means, “I find welcome rest in the Cross.”

What a wonderful family motto to have! For what could be more true? Just consider all that this proclaims – which is true for every Christian, and not just the Eddy variety:

1. Crux – “Cross” When we say something is the “crux” of the matter, we are saying it is the all important point, the essential issue on which the matter hangs. A different way is to say it is “crucial” to the matter, another word which derives from the word, “crux.” To all Christians, the cross is the essential point of our faith, for we know that it was on the cross that Jesus died to atone for all the sins of the world. Without his sacrifice on the cross, we would still be in our sins, unredeemed,  unforgiven, and lost forever. Scripture tells us that God nailed all our sins to the cross with Jesus  (Colossians 2:13-14) so that they are canceled. The cross is the symbol of our faith, because it is the basis for our hope and joy. The burden of the Law was lifted from us and put upon Christ; by his death, our debt was wiped clean, and by his resurrection, we know that we too shall rise again. It’s interesting to me that religions that deny the Christian faith reject the cross: Jehovah’s Witnesses say Jesus did not die on a cross, but on a “torture stake”; Mormons reject the cross as “idolatry”; and Muslims claim it wasn’t Jesus who was crucified, but Judas. What Christ did on the cross is essential, it is central, and it is crucial to what we believe, and to who we are.

2. Mihi – “I” This personalizes the message of the Gospel for me, and by extension, for each individual.  Christ died not only for the world in general, as in John 3:16, but also for every person in that world. 2 Peter 3:9 tells us that the Lord is “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” This speaks to me, not only telling me that God loves me personally, but also that all my sins, no matter what they are and how much I regret them, are forgiven. There is no thought that God may forgive others who are holier than I am, but my sins are greater, or are too numerous, or still crop up too often for him to wipe away. The message of the Gospel is that all sins are forgiven, and that includes all my sins. This personalized message means that by faith in Christ I have become a child of God (John 1:12), and have a restored relationship with him. His Spirit dwells within me, and not just in a distant Temple somewhere; indeed, I am now a temple of the Holy Spirit, a Temple made by God himself (1 Corinthians 6:16-19). God has assured me of his presence with me through thick or thin, even to the end of the age. You can’t get more personal than that.

3. Grata – “welcome” We have all heard the expression that certain people are “persona non grata,” meaning that they are not welcome somewhere. It is usually applied to diplomatic personnel who are kicked out of a country for some breech of behavior or protocol. But in Christ, we who were estranged from God by our sins have now been welcomed back, just as the Prodigal Son was welcomed home by his father. We know that the entire mission  which Christ had was to reconcile us to the Father, which we could not do ourselves. We read, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19). Because of Christ, we are now welcome guests at the great wedding feast of the Lamb to come, and welcome in heaven forever. There’s a second sense of being welcome, and that is this: in Christ and by his cross, we find what is truly welcome for us, including relief from sins, hope for the future, love and acceptance, and as we will see in the final word of the motto, rest.

4. Quies – “rest” If you’ve noticed, certain old gravestones have the initials, “R.I.P.” on them. We understand them to mean, “Rest in Peace,” though they originally were for the Latin phrase of the same meaning: “Requiescat in Pace.” You can see the root word, “quies” in the middle of the first word. The phrase is a Christian message, praying that the deceased will rest in peace until the day of the resurrection. Certainly, we believe that those who die in Christ will be at peace and will blessed with eternal life and heaven to come. But there is also the sense that we Christians still find rest in Christ even while we are still alive. As pilgrims in this world (like the pilgrims on my crest) we struggle and search on our journey through life. We encounter good and bad, joy and sorrow. We strive with great efforts at times, whether with problems or just with the labors that life demands. We seek to know God, and our purpose in life. We can search high and low, near and far, but until we find God through his Son, we remain unsure and restless. As St. Augustine of Hippo put it in his book, Confessions, in 400 AD, “Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.” When we find God, when we know he welcomes us with love and forgiveness, we can finally have true rest, now, in this life. We don’t need to wait till it’s inscribed on our grave stone. We have true rest.

So there you have it. No need for me to invent some new motto; besides, my Latin’s not good enough. I’d probably come up with something like, “sus sit mihi rosea” (my pig is pink) or “vaccasque inposuerunt super lunam salire” (cows jump over the moon). Nope; better I stick with the motto handed down to me by wiser generations than mine. But as much as I love the Eddy family motto, it doesn’t really matter what Latin motto I inscribe on a coat of arms; what matters is the faith that Christ has inscribed on my heart. In that faith, by the cross of Christ, we find true rest. And that is the crux of the matter!

Now may the Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5, Hebrews 4