When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling.
1 Corinthians 2:1-3
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.Romans 6:5
If the books of the Bible were a family, the "black sheep" might be Ecclesiastes. One does not read it for comfort or uplift. It is not a book of "good news." Its news is in fact quite sobering. It describes life's inevitable tragedies, and tells us (7:1) that "the day of death is better than the day of birth."
Is life not a good thing? Shouldn't we be grateful for it? Should we instead look forward to death?
A midrash (commentary of the Rabbis, Exodus Rabbah 48:1) explains this verse:
It is like two ships sailing upon the ocean. One leaves the harbor, while the other is returning home. People celebrate the first, but not the second.
A wise man said: I see it differently. We should not celebrate the one leaving the harbor, because no one knows what rough seas or storms it may encounter. But as to the ship that returns, all should rejoice that it has come back in peace.
It is the same with us. A person who is born should be regarded as dead - and when dead, should be seen as living.
This sounds rough, pessimistic, even anti-life. But that is not the intent. This passage points to an existential truth: we greet the entrance of a new life into the world with joy, optimism, and hope, but the destiny of that creature will involve many trials, much disappointment, and almost always much suffering and a painful death. To be born is to enter a suffering world.
This is why the story of Jesus' passion is so powerful.
The greatest mystery in the New Testament is the crucifixion, its meaning, and its transcendence. We may turn to the Gospels for assurance and hope, but as the story progresses we face impending darkness as we see the tragic and painful end approaching. The signs and references that foreshadow this end, which the Gospel writers so skillfully sprinkle throughout the early chapters, create a sense of dread as we follow Jesus through his life and ministry.
The story continues to inspire so many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, because it is so much like our own story. Jesus, who is called the "son of man," experiences every emotion we do - joy, love, anger, sadness, fear - and in the hardship and suffering of our own lives we too experience something of the crucifixion.
So we read the Gospels wanting to know: How did Jesus handle the experience of being human? Was he able to overcome its terrors? Can he help us, through his example, to overcome them too?
"Salvation" is a term from the Bible that refers to this overcoming of fear. Unfortunately, the word has become a religious cliché, taken to mean some sort of personal lock on the afterlife. But the word is used in many contexts throughout both the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. "Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid" (Isaiah 12:2). Salvation means the ultimate conquest of fear through the awareness of God's presence.
Salvation is not simply a matter of what one believes. It is the condition of finding oneself in God's care and as part of the divine plan. Finding salvation means finding a faith that allows one to move forward with confidence in spite of the fears that are inescapably part of human life. When Paul spoke of salvation he was pointing toward an existential reality, a faith that is real and has the power to lift one out of the terrors of life and into the presence of God. This salvation was meant for everyone, not just a chosen few. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel: it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). What was the heart of the salvation that Paul preached?
The crucifixion! Paul understood how shocking this message was: "For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles" (I Corinthian 1:22-23). One should not read these verses as a debate between Christianity and the other religions of the world, which would impose the viewpoint of a later time on Paul's message. Paul is contrasting one way of acquiring faith with attempts people often make that do not work.
One cannot find faith by relying on miracles ("signs"), as the Jews of Jesus' time did, or by exercising the intellect in philosophical speculation ("wisdom"), as the Greeks did. Both are attempts to locate the center of faith outside one's own personal struggle with life and the spiritual growth resulting from that struggle. The Jews sought their faith in external signs, the Greeks in external knowledge. Paul understood that the soul must be transformed from within, and that any faith based solely upon assurances from outside sources of authority is childish and fragile. So he did not come proclaiming the testimony of God "in lofty words or wisdom," in abstract concepts that might impress a theologian but that fail to touch the heart. Paul had no words of his own that could give faith to anyone else, and so he relied on the only alternative he could find: the preaching of "Jesus Christ, and him crucified."
But what does the crucifixion have to do with salvation, the conquest of fear? The crucifixion stands for the last horror in life, the worst fear realized. What salvation can it possibly offer? Why doesn't Paul preach the resurrection only?
Many commentators as well as some early sources, failing to understand the message of the crucifixion, have tried to deny it. Some have even said that Jesus did not actually suffer, that he chose to be crucified to demonstrate that life is really indestructible. According to the gnostic Coptic Apocalypse of Peter the crucified one was not the real Jesus. The true living Jesus stood above the cross, laughing. The Koranic account also denies the cross. According to the Koran (4:157f), Jesus was not crucified at all; those who believed it was Jesus on the cross were fooled by an appearance.
Many have also believed that the resurrection itself makes the crucifixion inconsequential. They prefer to jump over the suffering of the cross and go straight to the redemption. Why spend any time with the cross if we know that resurrection is at hand?
The resurrection symbolizes the possibility of overcoming crucifixion. It is not given to us as a certainty. Even though Jesus predicted the resurrection, he still suffered intense anxiety and doubt. Faith is not knowledge. It is a sense of assurance, of the working of a higher goodness in our lives. But even having faith, we are still subject to the temptation to doubt. We gain faith in our journey through doubt. We cannot avoid that journey if we aspire to a faith having both depth and durability.
The resurrection was not a separate event that just chanced to happen after death on the cross. Something within the crucifixion itself made the resurrection possible. If we overlook the connection between the two, or deny the significance of the crucifixion, then the resurrection becomes irrelevant, at best merely one of the external signs Paul dismissed as having no saving power for us in our lives as we must actually live them.
The crucifixion is not just a single incident that occurred at one moment in time. It is a symbol of the suffering that is an inescapable part of being human. Paul's message intends to proclaim a faith powerful enough to take the cross into itself - a faith that does not depend on denying the hardships of human experience. This kind of faith reaches out in love to suffering people right where they are, touches them, embraces them, and gives them confidence to keep on living. This faith must take into account the certainty of the cross.
Jesus said, "Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:27). Deep faith is won only through accepting one's cross and struggling with doubt and fear. Those lucky enough to come to faith without this struggle do possess a strength, but it may not hold up when a true crisis comes, and it will probably have limited value when called upon to offer support to others.
Paul Tillich, in The Courage to Be, makes a puzzling statement. He says that the only real alternative to Christianity in the Western world is Stoicism. Pondering the relationship between the two, and how they are alternatives to each other, tells us something about faith.
The way of the cross and the way of the Stoic are similar in that neither one flinches from suffering in its quest for self-transcendence.
The Stoic overcomes suffering by accepting it with courageous resignation. The classical example was Socrates' courageous acceptance of his death. The society in which he lived felt threatened by the values he espoused and by his public defense of them. Fearful that he was subverting the loyalty of its youth, it condemned him to death. But the authorities offered Socrates an escape: they would spare his life if he would cease his teaching. Socrates refused. He assured them that if he were released he would behave no differently from before. On the day of his execution he drank the poison with a calmness that astonished his disciples.
While Socrates had a way out, he knew he had no honorable way out. Had he agreed to the state's terms for his release, he would have compromised the heart of his teaching. By so capitulating he would have become a coward and a hypocrite. So he accepted his fate as inevitable, and the knowledge that he was acting with honesty and honor gave him the strength to endure it.
This is the courage of Stoicism. It is a viable alternative to being enslaved by fear. But it requires much strength, more than many of us possess. It requires a self-assurance and confidence in one's convictions that few of us know.
Sometimes fear simply overwhelms us. We cannot always make the most honorable choice based solely on the strength of knowing it is right. We may lack the assurance, the freedom from self-doubt that Socrates had. Therefore we need, many of us, an alternative to Stoic courage that enables us to approach fear and suffering and to emerge with faith.
This alternative is given by the message of the cross. It is an extremely paradoxical alternative: the cross itself becomes the instrument of our salvation. To understand what this means and how it is possible, let us explore the event of the crucifixion as the Gospels record it.
We begin in Gethsemane where Jesus, alone, confronts the danger awaiting him. Jesus did not want to be alone, and it seemed he might not have to. He had, after all, twelve disciples who professed devotion to him; they were in some ways like a family. He took the three closest to him, Peter, James, and John, and asked them to watch with him. Then he moved a little farther on, and asked God to spare him, if possible, from his suffering.
His disciples had all been warned; they knew this moment was critical. Yet even these most devoted three could not face with Jesus the reality of what was about to occur. So they abandoned him. When he returned from his prayer he found them sleeping.
He tried to wake them up, three times, but without success. Still, he understood this failure of spirit. Our own situation is not very different. Even if we live with family members who love us and care for us, even if we have friends who are loyal, at some point we have to face our trials alone. Even those closest to us cannot be with us all the time.
This was definitely a trial for Jesus. He was not simply going through the motions. He really was afraid. The text tells us: he was "sorrowful and troubled"; "My soul is very sorrowful, even to death" (Matthew 26:37-38). He prayed "three times" for his suffering to be lifted: this is the Bible's symbol for the intensity of his concern. Jesus wanted neither suffering nor death. Still, during that time at Gethsemane he accepted his fate and even embraced it.
What gave him the strength to do this? Jesus did not have the Stoic courage of Socrates. In Socrates we find no anxiety, no hesitation; he knows the only right course of action to take, and he takes it because he knows it is right. In Jesus we find evidence that he experienced fear, that he doubted himself, that he doubted God, and that he was tempted to retreat. Why ask God three times to spare him from a fate he himself told his own disciples was necessary, unless at that moment his mind was full of doubt? Jesus' experience is closer by far to the experience of most of us than is the experience of Socrates. That is why Jesus and not Socrates is called "son of man."
The four versions of Jesus' experience on the cross differ greatly. But taken together they tell us a lot about what it means to face one's destiny and to find strength even in one's greatest weaknesses.
In Matthew, the crucifixion is an experience of despair. Jesus' final words quote from Psalm 22: "'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'' (Matthew 27:46). The anguish in this cry is real. One trivializes the crucifixion if one tries to deny the depth of feeling Jesus expresses in these words, as, for instance, the Lamsa Bible does when it translates from a questionable reading of the Aramaic, "My God, my God, for this I was spared!" Matthew wants to show Jesus' real torment, as he describes the moment of Jesus' death: "And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit"' (Matthew 27:50).
Mark's account closely parallels Matthew's, and may have been Matthew's main source. In Luke, however, we find something different. The despairing quote from the twenty-second psalm is missing. Instead, we find Jesus reassuring the repentant criminal crucified next to him: "'Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise'" (Luke 23:43). Jesus' life ends not with a cry of anguish but with an affirmation of his faith: "Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, 'Father, into your hands I commend my spirit'" (Luke 23:46) - a quote not from Psalm 22 but from Psalm 31.
The original Greek text is revealing, since the English versions have Jesus, in both Matthew and Luke, "crying with a loud voice." The word translated "crying" in Luke (23:46) is phonésas, whose root means "to make a sound," or to speak with emphasis. The word translated "cried" in Matthew (27:50) is kráxas, whose root means "to scream," or "to shriek." The significance of Jesus' final cry in Matthew is very different from that in Luke. In one of Jesus' most celebrated last sayings, again found in Luke, Jesus meets his suffering with tremendous love: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Although some early sources lack this passage, the words very much fit the tone of Jesus' life and teaching, and the manner of Jesus' death as Luke portrays it.
How can we explain the apparent clash between these two accounts of the crucifixion? Can they both be describing the same experience of the same individual?
The entire message of the cross is given in the fact that these two accounts are not only consistent with one another, but that neither can really be understood without the other.
The confidence and faith of Luke's account cannot be separated from the despair and doubt in Matthew's account. True faith is possible only after confronting real fear. Fear appeared to Jacob in the form of an angel, and by wrestling with it he emerged with the confidence he needed to meet his angry and vengeful brother. Faith comes from the struggle with reality. It can never come from falsehood, from denying one's experiences and one's reactions.
Too often religion fails to respond adequately to the suffering from which the quest for faith arises. It may even deny the reality of suffering to preserve at all costs a cherished notion of God. This kind of religion confines God to a set of neat answers to simple questions that have little to do with our actual experience. True faith only grows from facing one's experiences, one's weaknesses, and one's fears. Jesus did this when he confessed his fear to God but resolved to accept his destiny.
The message of the cross is the strange paradox that facing our fears is the way to faith. At first, when fear overwhelms us, this hardly seems possible. How then are fear and faith connected?
The chain connecting them has two links: truth and love. Truth and love are qualities that witness to God's presence in us.
In truth we take our painful experiences exactly as they come to us, we stay honest with ourselves, we refuse to run away from trials we know we will have to face. This, however, is only a prelude to faith.
The true source of strength in faith is a love that can reach out to the pain of the cross and embrace it with compassion. Love is at the heart of the mystery of the cross, and is what makes the way of the cross different from the way of the Stoics. Love provides the possibility of a creative response to suffering even for those who lack Stoic courage.
Jesus' acceptance of the cross was an act of love, and it was love that gave him the power to accept it. This was evident at the moment of Jesus' arrest, when he ordered Peter to sheath his sword after he had struck the slave of the high priest. What kind of love enabled Jesus to keep moving forward in spite of the fearfulness of what awaited him?
The time in which Jesus lived was extremely difficult for the Jewish people. They lived at the mercy of the Roman occupying force. Pontius Pilate, the prefect who governed them, was known for his brutality. The tax collectors who worked for the Roman authorities were little better than highway robbers. Many of the people yearned for a messiah who would lead them to freedom in a revolt against Rome. Jesus saw their need, but knew he was not meant to establish the earthly kingdom they desired. He could not take away their suffering. He could only show them how to conquer it.
By freely choosing to accept the cross - the ultimate symbol of intimidation and humiliation, the worst the Romans had to offer - Jesus expressed love for his people. He could have saved himself, he could have fled, recanted, or begged for mercy, but by doing so he would have abandoned those who placed their trust in him. Instead he chose to express a specific kind of love: the love inherent in being present. As an act of compassion ("suffering with") he accepted the suffering that was forced on them and that they could not escape.
Jesus allowed himself to be crucified between two criminals, and through his attention to them he was with them at the time of their worst isolation, as well as his own. The difference between Jesus and these two others was not simply his innocence but also that he accepted his fate willingly, as he said: "the Son of man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). In spite of his uncertainty - faith is not a matter of certainty - he accepted his suffering based on faith that God's presence would remain with him. He could not be sure of it - we know he was not, if the words "My God, why have you forsaken me?'' have any meaning - but he still had enough faith to allow him to act. And if God could, in some unforeseen way, maintain his presence with Jesus, then those who witnessed Jesus' example would be strengthened in their own faith. This was Jesus' gift to them, by his choosing not to escape his suffering.
This is how suffering is overcome by love. The core of love is awareness, and one part of awareness is presence. The love with which Jesus confronted his own suffering consisted of maintaining a compassionate presence with a suffering people who needed to witness the spiritual conquest of the pain and humiliation by which they themselves felt threatened. Jesus demonstrated this presence by choosing the suffering with which they were already afflicted.
If we are indeed healed through Jesus' death, as Christianity claims, it cannot be because his dying somehow magically erased our sins, as the ancient killing of the scapegoat was believed to have done. It is because Jesus' compassionate acceptance of the cross shows us that God's love overpowers the deepest threats to physical and spiritual existence. It shows us we can meet suffering without losing our faith, and that God's presence continues to act as a discernible reality in our lives.
But here is the paradox: how can accepting the cross conquer anything? The people were hoping for a show of strength; they wanted a gallant leader who would stand up to the power of Rome. Instead Jesus demonstrated what appeared to be weakness: he chose to suffer, to bear his own cross. When they arrested him he said nothing; when they tried him and whipped him he said nothing; when they crucified him he did not resist. The meek do not inherit the earth, they are crucified: this has always been the criticism of Jesus' message. Choosing to suffer when he could have escaped? What kind of spiritual triumph is this?
The triumph came not from weakness itself but from the willingness to see and to accept weakness, which is actually a great strength. That Jesus could see his own weaknesses, face them squarely, yet maintain his full awareness and presence in spite of them, led him to find strength. He knew he could not stand up to the Romans, and he was afraid of what they could do to him. Though tempted to escape, he never considered escaping his full awareness of the event. He did not pretend a courage he could not feel. He confessed to God his doubts and anxieties. Then fully conscious of them, and willing to live with his fear, he went ahead anyway.
Fear is the great enemy of faith, the testimony of our experience that there is no God. Fear undermines our faith in many ways. It shakes our trust in the essential goodness of life. It causes us to resent those who make us afraid. It also makes us hate ourselves.
Fear, resentment, and self-hate are closely linked. Resentment is a natural reaction to fear: nobody likes to be intimidated. The underside of resentment is self-hate: we hate the image of ourselves as being afraid, meek, lacking courage, being a victim of others or of circumstances we cannot control. We may try to compensate for this sense of weakness with an insensitive, hostile aggressiveness, but the anger behind it is evidence that the self-hate still exists.
The self-hate inside resentment is what makes resentment so unbearable; it gnaws at our insides, placing us under great stress and threatening our health. Resentment always expresses self-hate because it is always a physical and emotional attack on the self; this is clear once we become aware of the stress that it produces.
Sometimes we can overcome resentment by facing the contribution we have made to our own suffering, letting other people "off the hook" and healing our sense of powerlessness. Yet there are times in our lives when we really are powerless, when we have little control over our suffering, and seemlngly little escape from resentment. Such moments attack our faith at its core.
I am writing this shortly after having seen one of my cancer patients at the hospice, whom I will call Susan. When I entered her room this evening I saw her angrily slapping her paralyzed leg because it would not move. She made a tremendous effort to move it, managed to budge it just an inch or two, but the effort took so much out of her that she lost her voice and could not speak above a raspy whisper.
Susan is full of contradictions. She loves the company of others, but can be quite nasty to people who are trying to help. No false move goes unpunished. If I play a wrong note on my guitar, she lets me know it. To a nurse who suggested she could be a little nicer, Susan responded that she, Susan, is the patient, and it is the nurse's job to be nice, not hers. Susan has alienated a number of staff members whose help she really needs.
One day I found Susan on the floor, upset and practically in tears. She had made a bowel movement and could not get to the bathroom in time. Because she could not walk, she fell as she tried to get out of bed. Fortunately she was wearing a diaper, but did not want to trust it. It was too humiliating.
I wet some paper towels, put soap on them, and helped her clean up. I told her she could trust the diaper, that's what it's for. She understood, but still clung hard to her determination to walk. Susan is a deeply religious Christian, and for her the effort to regain her ability to walk is a test of her faith.
But what if she never does walk again?
I decided to put the question to her. Can she accept herself and her condition, no matter what? No, she answered, she cannot.
And so we talked, about her disability, her loss of control, her paralysis, her frustration, the simple humiliation of not being able to go to the bathroom.
And we talked about her anger. She was surprised when I told her that her anger came from self-rejection. But once it was identified, she could see it clearly. She hated herself for being what she now was, helpless, unable to care for her most basic needs.
I reminded her of what Jesus said: that if we are to be his disciple, we must be willing to take up our cross. The cross takes a different form for each individual. This is the form it is taking for her.
I also reminded her of how Jesus said we must become like children if we are to enter into the Kingdom. What is it about a child? A child trusts. A child has faith in the direction of its parents. And if a child is young enough, sometimes a child uses a diaper.
When Susan heard this she took my head into her arms and kissed me. She didn't have to hate herself now. She is being called to realize this teaching of Jesus in the most radical way. She is being asked, by her own personal cross, to drop her insistence on control and her resentment of her weakness to discover the childlike faith of which Jesus spoke - and through this faith, to learn to love herself. Or perhaps more to the point, to learn that she is loved.
Susan remembered a verse she had quoted to me just the week before: "The Lord will fight for you; and you have only to be still" (Exodus 14:14). To this I added the words of St. Paul: "When I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10). Susan's physical condition did not change. The difference was that now she became conscious of God's presence. Something beyond her carried her in spite of her helplessness.
This was Susan's Gethsemane. Her struggle recalled that of Jesus: when faced with suffering one cannot control or avoid, one does not flee, one remains present. And then one discovers that being present is a deep form of love. It can even be an entrance to the knowlege of a love that is higher than any human capacity.
Love is presence. Children know they are loved if they know their parents are present. They feel secure knowing that as they sleep, their parents sleep in the room next to them. In the Bible God's love is often described in terms of being a watchful presence: "He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep" (Psalm 121:4), "I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you" (Joshua 1:5), "You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you" (John 14:17).
The simplest act of love is to maintain a presence with one who needs to be loved. This presence must not be merely physical, but psychological and spiritual.
To be psychologically present means to maintain an awareness of the situation at hand, the individual and what he or she needs. It means not to shut off our awareness of whatever may be frightening us, not to allow panic to drive us into a frantic search for escape routes.
To be spiritually present means to maintain a sense of clarity, to stay grounded in the moment, not to abandon ourselves; it means to find an objective, observing inner presence that accompanies us through the difficulty. Even while remaining physically present in a tough situation we can still run away from it in spirit if fear sets our thoughts racing, fleeing awareness of the present. Fear makes it difficult to be courageous, but even if we hardly feel capable of courage we can still respond positively to fear by maintaining a presence within it.
And so to accept the cross means to take the burden of fear upon ourselves. When overpowered by fear, the only response immediately available may be to maintain our awareness of it. We refuse to abandon ourselves, and we accept fear's presence until something in our perception of it changes. We may not know when the change will come or what form it will take, but a situation of conflict or turbulence never remains static.
The beginning of inner strength is facing our own fears. Paul understood this: "For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Corinthians 12:10, RSV). It is not weakness itself that makes us strong, but the willingness to accept our awareness of it and to remain present in spite of it.
We now come back to those two links in the chain of faith. When we maintain a presence with our fear we realize two divine qualities: truth and love. Truth is evident in our resolve to be honest with ourselves, not to escape the awareness of our difficulty, not to trivialize the problem but to face it directly. Love is evident in our resolve to stay present with ourselves, not to fly into fantasy or panic, but to accept ourselves as we are and watch over ourselves in time of trial. From truth and love comes the strength to endure and persevere. Thus even in our weakness we know that we are strong.
The compassionate presence we maintain within ourselves even when we are afraid is the beginning of faith in the midst of suffering. We may experience this presence as a way of loving ourselves. But we are not the source of this love. We cannot decide to love ourselves. The love we experience toward ourselves results from the strength we develop as we continue to persevere in fear's presence. To know this love for ourselves while we so strongly experience our weaknesses is really to know a love that comes from beyond ourselves.
We know this love is indeed greater than ourselves because it gives us the strength to reach out to others when they too are weak, even while we are still broken. The presence we maintain within ourselves becomes a presence we maintain with others. The gift of love we offer to those who are suffering has nothing to do with worrying about them, sharing their fear, trying to change them, or trying to interfere with their problems. Often simply being present, perhaps not even physically but certainly spiritually, with someone in distress can have a healing, calming effect, even if we do not utter a single word. At some level others will know that we are with them, even if they cannot respond to our presence.
Love that takes us beyond ourselves is evidence of God's presence. It is therefore a basis for faith. Jesus exemplified this by choosing to live with his fear until it became faith. Paradoxically, his outcry to God against God's having abandoned him was itself an act of faith.
Jesus' refusal to break his dialogue with God transformed the cross. No longer dreading it, he chose it as an act of love. From the compassionate presence he established within himself he could reach out to comfort the one crucified next to him.
Love embraces the cross and overcomes it. Love can begin in the willingness to live with fear, through which we discover our inner strength. We become a compassionate presence, which may even touch others. Through this compassionate presence we gain God's presence. It gives us faith. It protects us from spiritual death, which is a loss of vitality due to the destruction of our faith. This conquering of spiritual death is the meaning of resurrection. The changes that make resurrection possible, however, must take place while we are still on the cross. Not every crucified is resurrected, but only those who find a way to overcome the cross through inner strength and love.
The despairing Jesus of Matthew, who honestly confesses to God his sense of abandonment, makes the confident, faithful Jesus of Luke possible. By confessing his weaknesses and remaining spiritually present in spite of them, Jesus finds the strength necessary to offer faith to others. This conquest of suffering through love is the fulfillment of the crucified Jesus in the Gospel of John, who while still on the cross, just before his death, can say with confidence that "It is finished." This Jesus dies not with a loud outcry but with a simple bow of the head (John 19:30).
The love through which Jesus transformed the cross is available also to us. Paul captures it in a single sentence: "And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling." Experiencing weakness, fear, and trembling, I nevertheless remain present. I call my weaknesses by their names, I know that I have them, but I am here, I am with you, I am aware of myself, and I am aware of you.
Compassionate, "suffering-with" love conquers fear in a most paradoxical way: it meets fear right where it lives. It overcomes fear by being aware of it, by reaching out to it, holding it, and being present with it. Compassion is the true source of our power to accept the cross. Even when we are gripped by fear, by maintaining our compassion we become instruments of divine love, a love that breaks through our self-interest to witness to something greater than the self.
Compassionate, all-embracing love is the condition for resurrection from spiritual death. "For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his." We can be revived, but first we must die a death like his. A death "like his" death is a death we embrace through the power of compassion.
Above all, a death "like his" death is a death accepted as the natural and inevitable end of life. This was Jesus' great gift: that by accepting even the most painful death, and by transforming it into an act of love through his compassionate presence, he gives us hope that we too can overcome our own painful death. For Jesus was not the only one who died on a cross. My patient Susan died on a cross of linen, whose pain and the fear it created lasted far more than a single night.
Many of us will know similar pain and fear. However long it may last, Jesus' gift of choosing to experience it with us tells us it is one of the many brief moments of our lives, which will disappear as quickly as it came. If life is "a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14), then how much more transitory is death. Though it may seem like eternity while we are passing through it, it is as swift as any other time in life, which quickly becomes a memory we can barely grasp. When we know this, and feel the persistent reality of compassion, we can join Paul in affirming that "the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us" (Romans 8:18).
When we resolve to meet suffering with compassion, we really will be able to choose our suffering, in the sense that we would no longer exchange the lessons we have learned for the ease of not having experienced the pain. If we can become capable of choosing our suffering, we acquire a taste of the resurrection. There is new life within us in spite of the pain and death that may surround us.
Therefore Paul could say that suffering for God leads to a salvation that erases all regret: "For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death" (2 Corinthians 7:10). The Bible does not promise that faith will bring an end to suffering. It says only that when we do suffer, we can still know that a higher, guiding and loving presence accompanies us.
Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
(Isaiah 43:1-3)
You may still have to pass through the waters; you may still have to walk through the fire. The difference is that this time you will sense a loving presence beside you.
If we know how to meet suffering in a way that increases our inner strength and deepens our capacity for love, then whatever the specific outcome of our difficulty, it will leave us in a better place than we were before: more self-aware, more loving, more available to others, and closer to God. Therefore "Everything works for good with those who love him" (Romans 8:28): everything, even the unknown suffering still waiting for us. Problems cease to be threats of destruction and become instead the means of the building of our character. Instead of fearing that the crisis we are facing will be the end of us, we will ask: How will God also transform this one, and where will God take me as I pass through it?
When we can suffer with this much awareness we will have received the message of the cross: that by embracing it with love, we need never have to fear it again.