It is finished, but it is not over. The veil between earth and heaven is torn, and faith, following the path that Christ has taken, sees through. But the faith that sees is in a world still covered by darkness. The only way to the light is the way he took, the way through the heart of darkness, the way of the cross. That is where he is to be found; that is where he finds those whom he takes to the Father. This has always been, and is today, the great offense of Christianity: the cross. "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews, and folly to the Gentiles."
A century after Paul, Justin Martyr wrote about how the Christians were mocked for worshiping as divine a crucified man: "They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of the world." - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon
Well, St. Justin, they don't bother mocking us for that anymore. Modern science has delivered us from any need at all of a Creator, so we are now mocked for our minds being too puny and superstitious to abandon such a quaint and unnecessary concept. After two thousand years, this has become a greater stumbling block than the cross. And yet this is still the crux of the issue: it is our rejection of God's authority, which seems to make the cross so essential, that causes us to discard the Creator so that we can avoid the judgment we hold ourselves above. It's important that we who believe not reply to our being mocked by mocking others for their minds being too puny or stubborn to grasp the full complexities and implications of our faith.
The great obstacle to fully proclaiming Christ with my own life doesn't involve any of those things, though. It is rather my inability to allow my habitual, stubborn areas of disobedience, whatever their sources, to be transformed in the ways that we say should happen when we become a new creation in Christ. He has delivered me through the depths of my darkest nights; should I not then find myself eager to forsake my self-absorbed whims and seek only my loving Father's will? Even though it require a great effort of will, shouldn't I always turn away from the world's darkness toward the light of Christ, knowing that the Father's will for me is a far better plan than my own? Fr. Neuhaus says that faith takes the path that Christ took which, while it may go through the heart of darkness, is ultimately a path of humble obedience. I fear to find myself worse off than those who reject God outright, as Jesus' harshest words were always for those who proclaimed one thing and lived another.
And yet, there is the matter of where I place my trust. Is it in my ability to be transformed, or is it in the one who transforms, who has delivered me from death? We often forget that the goal is to fully accept Christ as our savior, as the one who delivers us from sin and death - both those we turn away from and those we've committed. Rather, we often approach life as if the goal is to not need Christ to save us anymore.
While I must not go so far as to claim that my continued stumblings are a good thing, I must entrust myself fully to him, trusting that the task of my salvation is finished, even if it is not yet over.
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