The Joy of the Cross

“Rejoice O Life-bearing Cross, the invincible trophy of godliness, the door to paradise, firm support of the faithful, a wall that encompasses the Church. Through you corruption has been destroyed and abolished. The power of death has been swallowed up, and we are raised from earth to Heaven. You are a weapon that cannot be vanquished, the adversary of demons, the glory of the martyrs, the true adornment of saints, and the haven of salvation, granting the world great mercy.”

— First Sticheron at the Aposticha Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross

“Why God? Why now? Why me?” These questions, and many more in like manner, find their way to the lips of all who walk this earth. These are foundational queries which reflect our self-awareness and existential craft. We ask the question “why” because ultimately, as human beings, we understand and acknowledge that everything must ultimately have its meaning; to deny this is to surrender to the Enemy, whose chief weapon is our despondency, and whose aim is our destruction by it. Meaning gives shape to our lives. It makes bearable even the heaviest of loads. For us, as human beings, the answer to the question “why” allows us to contextualize our own suffering, and gives us the strength to endure.

And yet we, oftentimes in the same breath as “why”, spurn the answer; even the one given by God Himself. We can no more accept the answer to our question than divorce the question itself from its prompt, which is always suffering. A child is instructed to clean her room, and of course the inevitable response is “why”? There is a perceived injustice that is being suffered, and there must be an accompanying explanation as to why this pain must be endured. A co-worker gives instruction to a new person on the job, perhaps instruction that is incorrect. The newcomer answers again with “why?” He suffers under the ignorance of his superiors. But if one demands justification for what he perceives to be a transgression against his sovereignty or his self-defined wellbeing, should he not accept the answer? Why has the entire human race seemingly lost the will or ability to accept the answer that is given when it is asked for? This has come about because we live in a world that has refused suffering.

It is a curious thing to suffer. In his 2nd century epistle, St. Barnabas acknowledges this reality when he proclaims, “Man is earth in a suffering state, for the formation of Adam was from the face of the earth.” (6 Barnabas). From Adam onward, suffering is what it means to be a human being. It then begs the question: How can a loving and all-powerful God allow something so unpleasant to be an integral part of our life? To understand the why behind “the why,” we must first look at what it means to suffer. Since nobody wants to suffer, we must assume (and rightly so) that our society has formed a negative understanding of this word. But this has not always been so. Like so many other words in the English language (and others), suffering is multivalent, meaning that it can be used and understood in a variety of ways. The first and most commonly used would be to indicate the experience of pain, death, distress, loss, or damage; a fairly unpleasant proposition. But there are other, more useful ways in which we can understand what it means to suffer. When one suffers martyrdom, for instance, death becomes the outcome of that physical process. This experience however, transcends the physical into the metaphysical, becoming not just the mere end of life, but the submission to and endurance of the experience. This is what separates martyrdom from murder, which for Christians, is an extremely important distinction. Far from our modern understanding of suffering as an involuntary imposition, martyrdom is a willing participation and submission, a literal living out of one’s life as a witness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is not that we die, but how we die which makes all the difference.

Another sense of what it means to suffer is allowing things to happen by inaction or indifference; for instance, a mother suffers her children to play in the back garden. This is close to a submission, but there is a stronger hint of agency here. This is the difference between being subjected to something and enduring something. Both, of course, can be true at once, but more often than not, there is a dominant theme which emerges from the narrative of our life. This is portrayed beautifully for us by St. Paul in speaking of the Lord:

“Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross” (Phil 2.5-8).

When Christ suffers, he suffers as one who endures to the very end what has been laid upon Him; but the suffering is completely voluntary. We see this in the eucharistic prayers of St. John’s Divine Liturgy:

“…when He had come and had fulfilled all the dispensation for us, on the night in which he was given up, or rather gave Himself up for the life of the world…” (2nd Anaphora Prayer, Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom).

His death is not an inescapable punishment, but an agapitic self-emptying in his love for mankind. In short, Christ chooses to suffer, and to suffer well.

Another question is then raised; “How does one suffer well? What animates this willful endurance?” Another way to put it would be this; “What kept Christ on the cross?” Being the Son of God, he could easily have come down from the cross, bypassing all of that horrible suffering. But he did not. The force that kept Christ on the cross was love.

Come on, now, Jesus, remember your Dad:
Let’s show them all:
Screw world and sky into one crumpled ball
And come down off that cross like a good lad.
Jesus my own one,
Jesus my dear son,
Hear a mother’s prayer.

I hear, I hear, what though I hear,
Since my corpse jerked to the corporal’s spear
I am harrowed and harrow, I am in hell and here.
The cross is old, the nails are new.
I cannot come to you.

Caught between thieves, wind-spun, speared between earth and sky
By hunger and envy, greed and grief, weakness and cruelty,
Behold your son: your God: good creature, pity me.
The nails are new. The cross is old.
I cannot come though I be called.

— (Improperia by Francis Sparshott)

The cross is old, but the nails are new. Suffering is no new phenomenon in the time of Christ. Many suffered before, and many would suffer after. But this new suffering that is revealed to us in the crucifixion is new. This suffering is an offering of perfect love. It is an opportunity, given by the Father to the Son, to perfect that which He had begun milenia before; the creation of the world.

Christ has entered into the mystery of suffering and transformed it from the inside out, giving it meaning. Christ has shown us that the “why”, which is always catalysed by suffering, is always love. A perfect love, a mutual giving, and a gentle surrender to the hand of God, who works all things for the good of those who love Him (Romans 8.28).

It is hard to see, let alone to understand the mysteries that are bound up in the providence of God. It is not easy to suffer, and still harder to suffer well. And yet, that is what we, as Christians, have been called to do. God breaks, shapes, and molds us by our sufferings into His image and likeness; He makes us new. And we need not fear this, because we do not suffer alone; we have as our exemplar, the suffering God Who makes all things new by His love. In our suffering, Christ loves us, and shows us how to love like He loves. In our sufferings, as we descend to the depths of human experience, we ascend to the heights of noetic being, and answer the age old question “Why me?” with the proclamation, “For the love of Christ.”

Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp’d town to another due,
Labor to admit you, but oh, to no end;
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be lov’d fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy;
Divorce me, untie or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

(Holy Sonnet XIV, John Donne)