Jesus - Our Access to God

Jesus is access to the Father, the bridge to heaven, the road to hope.  Faith in Him, this is to believe that He is fully God and fully man, that he died for our sins and is risen from the dead, that He is present to each one of us personally even when He seems completely absent, that He called us all to be one in Him even in the face of our divisions.  Most of all, faith in Jesus is to let his longing capture our hearts.  For He longs for us.  This is what is revealed on the Cross.  This is why the only way to Him is the Cross.  We go to the Cross by faith, faith which renounces sin, endures trial, and is tested: in prayer, in work, in service to God, in loving others, in suffering sickness, in rejection, in persecution, in the face of death.  Whenever we go to the Cross, his longing is produced in us by the purifying fire of his Holy Spirit - and when we surrender to this loving action, there is nothing He cannot achieve in our lives.  Bound to Him, our cross with His, He raises us to the Father.