Gospel Note
The famous saying of Jesus about discipleship and "taking up his cross'' allows another interpretation worth exploring. Some exegetes suggest that in the pre-Easter version of the saying, stauros meant not a ''cross'' but a ''cross mark'' (a tau or chi, perhaps), such as was used to mark livestock. If that is the case, Jesus' original reference was to the Christian's taking on a mark of identification rather than martyrdom, which became the p…