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| Winner! - and losers. |
How do you define victory? For most of us, we default to something like what Ronald Reagan said was his plan for the Soviets in the Cold War: We win, they lose. It shocked people who had grown accustomed todétente, but arguably he achieved it within the decade. That formulation is called a zero-sum game. For one player to achieve, another must fail. For there to be a winner, there must be a loser.
Winning also has the aspect of vindication, that is, of being proven right. Right can be either factually correct or morally just. Both types of right are popular to claim, easy to assume, and all too rare to demonstrate or achieve.
Victory need not involve a human opponent, though, for one can overcome an obstacle, meet a challenge, or conquer one’s own fears. Victory can be complicated. There is the Pyrrhic victory, in which the victor in the battle suffers such great losses that it obtains the same consequences for him as defeat.
To be able to achieve victory, one must be able to describe it. How else will you know what you are fighting for, and how will you know when you have won? It is a step that cannot be omitted. I have begun re-reading a comprehensive history of the American Civil War and am reminded how many different categories and definitions of victory were nurtured by the political and military leaders as well as the populace in the days of its undertaking. Some were idealistic, some delusional; very few were realistic, and none so much as resembled what the eventual victory would look like and achieve, much less what it would cost. There is nothing new under the sun, says Qoheleth. (Eccles. 1:9)
This great day, Christ Jesus’ victory breaks this seemingly cyclical tyranny of sameness to make all things new. (Rev 21:5) The astonishing thing is how much his victory resembles defeat, and even our celebration of his triumph does not omit his betrayal, suffering, and death.
The ancient text of the Eucharistic Preface of the Holy Cross unfolds the complexity. For you placed the salvation of the human race on the wood of the cross, so that where death arose, life might again spring forth and the evil one, who conquered on a tree, might on a tree be conquered through Christ our Lord.
There is no parade of conquering forces nor of conquered enemies now subjugated. Has it ever caught your attention how differently Our Lord behaves in victory from such conventional patterns? He does not rise from the grave to punish his betrayers, but rather restore them to His friendship. He does not smite those who plotted His death, nor the mobs who howled for it. He does not parade His conquering strength, nor even once smirk, I told you so. How unlike our visions of victory is His great victory!
We omit none of this in sanctifying these days with the very holiness of our Savior, for we cannot enjoy the accomplishment without engaging the anguish. And we cannot know or understand much less set our sights on our own victory unless we accept this definition, this description of it.
When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: "Death is swallowed up in victory." "O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Cor 15:53-57)
Détente is not a plan nor a path to survival, much less success. Our enemy is not human and still desires nothing short of our defeat and our death. Yet here we are. Death with life contended: combat strangely ended! Life's own Champion, slain, yet lives to reign. (Easter sequence) Our champion, who is human anddivine, has destroyed death for us and given us victory, defined and delivered. Every day we embrace what He accomplished, we grow in our understanding of the freedom won for us, freedom especially from fear. Today, newly aware of the cost, newly fortified with the life and love of the Victor, God, we realize together This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad it! Alleluia.
Monsignor Smith
