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Chapter 8 - B: The Cross of Temporal Suffering With Christ, A Positive Element in the Earthly Kingdom of Christ, Its Fundamental Theological Significance
(Balik Sa Panginoon: Turn Our Ways Back to the Lord)
Balik Sa Panginoon (Back With God)
Luke 4:16-21
Jesus went back to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and as usual he went to the meeting place on the Sabbath. When he stood up to read from the Scriptures, he was given the book of Isaiah the prophet. He opened it and read,
"The Lord's Spirit has come to me, because he has chosen me to tell the good news to the poor. The Lord has sent me to announce freedom for prisoners, to give sight to the blind, to free everyone who suffers, and to say, THIS IS THE YEAR THE LORD HAS CHOSEN."
Jesus closed the book, then handed it back to the man in charge and sat down. Everyone in the meeting place looked straight at Jesus. Then Jesus said to them, "What you have just heard me read has come true today."
Chapter 8 - B: The Cross of Temporal Suffering with Christ,
A Positive Element the Earthly Kingdom of Christ,
Its Fundamental Theological Significance
(Also suffering As the Church’s Exaltation of the Holy Cross),
Suffering as Human Conflict or Human Disorder, Embedded Within Human Sinfulness
(A Supplementary Chapter to the above Chapter 8-B, A corollary chapter to Chapter 14 and Chapter 6, Part 1)
During this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross we are going one more time to tackle the topic of suffering or Christian suffering, which is this same topic as the crosses of our lives. Let us refresh the Good Friday ejaculation: "We adore Thee Oh Christ, and we bless Thee! For thy Holy Cross you have redeemed the world!"
The cross is only a symbol, but it is a sacramental symbol; it symbolizes the very essence of Christ’s mission on earth: the redemption/salvation of the world, which, thus, is the prime significance of the symbolism of the cross.
Beginning from the searching and finding by St. Helena, the Mother of the Great Christian Roman Emperor – Constantine, of the cross upon which was nailed and hung our crucified Lord Jesus, through the years the Church has venerated this sacred icon and artifact. Likewise, each individual Christian is to venerate the cross and the fundamental meaning and message it was instrumental to convey to all of mankind, the pricey cost of our getting saved from our sins: the very excruciating manner of dying of Christ in atonement to the Father for our sins.
The Cross stands for Christ’s suffering, i.e. for all the human pains, anguish, and sadness of Jesus especially during the very last moments of his human existence on this earth. Quickly and rationally, the world ridicules Christians for such symbolism as the culture of the glorification of pain, or what they call "masochism". But Christians look to the Cross as the sacramental sign by which is expressed the Son-of-God’s loving sacrificing of himself on behalf of sinful mankind to the Father to bridge back the separation of man from God. Clearly, for the Christians the Cross was not just a negative image; it was the most positive memorial of their deliverance from the bondage of sins, and their restoration into the good will of God. Rev. Fr. Music says, "The cross is the assurance that when we embrace dying in whatever forms it may come to us, we will find in Christ new life."
As we touch on this topic one more time, we highlight this dimension of conflicts within the universe in a much wider sense, but particularly in the light of human life, or according to the special perspective of man that he is loved by God specially, for whom has been sent God’s only begotten Son that man may be saved.
And as we go back to the Genesis’ beginning angle why conflict has befallen man or human existence in the universe, from Genesis, early on, in reference to the coming Savior’s facing off with the enemies of salvation it has been revealed how the Deliverer shall be wounded, and hurt by the enemy. "He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel..." Gen. 3:15 This pertains to Jesus, the Son of the new woman/new Eve – Mary –, which Jesus, who was victorious in ransoming man’s bondage and slavery to the Devil by his life, was precisely nailed to the cross (.. was struck at his heel by the Devil’s cohorts: by them sinful crucifiers at Calvary). Literally, indeed, this Jesus, the Son of God and the Son the Woman, was put to death, was made "t-o d-I-e".
Consequently, since then it has been carried over through generations of mankind that with Christ’s redeeming of man per his Incarnation and passion, death, & resurrection man has become participant in his salvific act and mission of Calvary. Since then it has become God’s scheme that all men’s dying process and experience get to become meritoriously beneficent through its incorporation with Christ’s redemptive act in the Paschal Mystery of Salvation. And since then, for each believer, the human fate of death or dying also becomes the prelude to the promised individual resurrection of all men of faith. In the believer’s following and imitation of the life of Jesus, man’s death & dying experience – united with Christ – becomes the rite of passage towards his/her own resurrection at the appointed time. This, thus, is the good news about being a Christian. But the bad news is, not very unlike the non-believers’ or un-believers’ death or dying experience, the Christians’ experience will not be any less the experience that it is: the same experience of human mortality and fragility. Indeed, all men, believers and un-believers alike have died, are dying, and will continue to be dying. For when the serpent bit the heel of the New Eve’s offspring, along with him are bitten, retroactively in time, all men & women, who by faith & grace were crucified with him on Calvary: all of Christendom.
For each one of them believers, crucified along with the Son of Man, like it has been for him, their united crucifixion with the Master remains an agonizing and painful act. Thus, it is each man’s inescapable fate to have to suffer death, to have to face up to with this human brokenness experience. Since time immemorial every man gets to bear with this human brokenness, or the brokenness within man, which denotes literally the physical separating of the body from the human spirit during death, as well as all the physic-psychological breaking up within man, and between or among men in life.
Thus, as have we discussed suffering on the first part of these Ninth Chapters and other related chapters initially, via our many illustrative examples, we have described suffering being fundamentally this phenomenon of brokenness either within the person or between persons. Through those examples we could decipher the individuals’ experiencing of being cut inside them – whether physically or emotionally, of being torn apart from someone or others, again spatially or emotionally or culturally, and/or of any other similar experience of the destroying of individuals and communities or inter-relations on account of, along with other human shortcomings, natural selfish oppositions or irreconcilable differences. We say an individual suffers when certain parts of his body breaks up, e.g. like bruises, and wounds, or like a broken heart as in hurt or injured feelings. Moreover, individuals suffer when between each other some separateness exists, or conflicts take place. Thus, we could generally denote suffering as human conflicts within him or conflicts with others. Whereas in the present treatment, we relate to the "serpents"/the devil’s biting of Jesus’ heel, and consequently of each believer’s heel as the damage inflicted by evil upon Jesus and his followers. We call this both the phenomenon and the mystery of human suffering and Christian-human sacrificing; this is the main brunt of discussion on part 1 of chapter. Initially, though, in the referred to 3rd, fourth, and 5th other chapters, we put in context how it all began: both sin and the devil’s getting into the mix of human and earthly existence. We refer to it as the fall experience and fate of Adam & Eve along with their entire descendant human race. The serpent/devil was permitted to have bitten Christ and all Christians in order that with the "bite’s" death effect upon Christ and the Christians, Jesus Christ and believing Christians are able to manifest Christ’s and the Christians’ victory over that "death experience" with Christ’s resurrection, and the Christians’ re-birth into the new life in Christ, including their promised physical resurrection during Jesus’ Second Coming. (To place all of these in context, this serpent’s bite consisted initially in the devil’s successful tempting of Adam & Eve, and Adam & Eve’s consenting to the temptation, which led to their losing their beginning life of grace, divine life, given them in Eden upon creation, and to the consequential banishment into Earth’s sin-tainted natural/human existing, i.e. the total earthly-human predicament of conflicts & suffering. But by Christ’s incarnation & redemptive Paschal Mystery of salvation of man, the Lord Jesus willed to embrace the bitten humanity, including its death fate precisely in order that by his Divinity, he can reverse the effect of the serpent’s bite, and restore humanity into their sharing of the life of God, the life of Christ in grace.)
In continuation of our treatment of the topic of conflicts & suffering, we have repeatedly stated how they permeate everyday’s fact of life. All men have to face up with this universal phenomenon of conflicts of all kinds: conflicts inside man’s psychosis and physiology, and outside man, i.e., between men’s constantly polarized inter-relating in thousands of varied and inexplicable ways.
However, with universal human brokenness or universal brokenness of all mankind, the essential truth, nevertheless, is that human brokenness could radically work as a healing & wholeness medium and tool for the believers. It could serve to be its own virtual remedy to the conflict. Unlike them, the unbelievers remain to deal with conflicts coming across them exactly for what they are: nothing less than the negative non-liberating brokenness, i.e., actually destructive meaningless and value-less agonizing and hurting suffering. The fact is – it is not uncommon among unbelievers/non-believers to commit suicides. Persisting rejecting of God, namely a living that neither refuses to abdicate a public lifestyle of sin, nor acknowledges need for repentance of their sins cast these souls in the cage of darkness, as they find themselves more and more helpless & miserable captives of evil and by all its working. "The wages of sin is death", says the Scripture. Like we have discussed in Chapter 4 regarding the ‘un-holy’ living that denies the truth of Jesus Christ, their voluntary disavowing of the truth has got them stuck in un-stopped entanglements with the manacles of evil forces, (which human activity, thus creates and generates all forms and shades of human and social conflicts & damages, i.e. our topic of discussion here). Thus, their abandoning of the truth prevents them from being freed by the truth. Consequentially, for their continuing embracing of sins they heap life troubles and wasted living upon themselves. Under such conditions, they are left to their own element. Under the circumstances, they easily turn self-described cynics or pessimists, while stuck and trapped in their un-repentant ways. And for being completely blinded by the deceptions and allurements of evil, they could not care less if they actually cohort with the Devil himself. It is not hard to imagine the most heinous deeds they can be capable of committing, which evil deeds could cause tremendous wrongs and unhappiness around others but especially upon themselves. For the peace of God surely cannot rest upon such individuals. And without the peace of God, there is only turmoil and fear.
On the other hand, while we have universally accepted all men being victims of and subject to life’s conflicts, whether internally or externally/publicly, and while we have realistically to reckon with the pernicious grievous wrongdoings by evil people, it serves believers to remember the following admonition from St. Regarding inescapable human suffering, St. Peter writes, (1Peter 4:15-16), "See to it that none of you suffers for being a murderer, a thief, a malefactor, or a destroyer of another’s rights." In other words, as we suffer it should not be on account of ourselves perpetrating evil deeds like the worst of sinners do. In this context, though suffering like all others, as believers suffer, they are not to suffer necessarily without peace and necessarily feeling un-assured or protected, and even if they suffer, maybe, with more than regular dosage that others have. We already acknowledge by faith our living in this imperfect world, having to bear the ill effects of Adam & Eve’s fallout from Divine favor. But while no one member of the human race is exempted from this mess of Adam & Eve’s original sin, from this stuff of man’s fallen existence; on the other hand, each man could freely by grace opt for suffering’s liberating means per participation in the most wonderful sacramental uniting with Christ’s Paschal Mystery.
And so unless we believe, while we do suffer ‘the storms of life’ will come; there is not much we can humanly do to naturally stop them, there is no natural tool to hold back he torrents of suffering crested inseparably in our hard-to-change circumstances of living. Hence, each one of us is to take them in stride, and cope with them – live or die.
Surely, we do eagerly welcome and we tend to lavishly celebrate these life’s sunny days and cool times in fun and festiveness. Yet these sunny days and cool times, as they come now, they are also gone next. And the stormy season invariably is back again wreaking havoc at will.
Thus, we are wont to say ‘we feel blessed’ when we are overwhelmingly receiving and celebrating all sorts of material and earthly gifts of life, particularly as we openly appreciate them, and even a bit indulge in them.
Then when the time to hurt, to cry, to agonize, or to die comes, we must take them too – as we say – in stride and in full resignation as a fate beyond our power and control; though definitely not without hope and trust in the Lord’s ever watchful care. And, in an honest-to-goodness reckoning, this is where we do not fake happiness when we are sad; or where we do not sugar coat bitter or sour ordeals and predicaments but accept them for what they are. We are to remember that the Lord Jesus agonized in the Garden of Gethsemane, that the Lord Jesus was scourged in the Palace of Pontius Pilate, that the Lord Jesus was crowned with thorns right before the same majestic Governor Pilate, who condescended and implicitly sentenced the Lord Jesus to carry the cross and to crucifixion death. This was the same "hand-washing" Pilate, who was untruthfully condescending about imputed Christ’s guilt as to be sentenced with a horrible death punishment. But our Lord was resigned to this Divine fate.
When they, conflicts & real heartaches, blizzard us thus in avalanche, during such time or season of crying and agonizing, or aching - whether physic-psychologically or spiritually; in whichever inescapable ordeals we find ourselves, we, oftentimes shall simply have to abandon ourselves in helpless human insufficiency, inadequacy, and utter necessity but yet in total trustful dependence upon God.
And beset, thus, by life’s "valley of tears", it is even aggravating that occasionally, there would present to us the Pontius Pilates of our time, who, like pontificating critics, casually drop us a line about our inability to hide life sadness and occasional spirit of depression with words like, "... un Santo triste y un triste santo" – (What an unhappy saint!) The connotation being our being a sad saint kind of belies and nullifies the joy of the holiness in the Lord. These casual one-liner droppers, who are either humanly carried away by their rather subjective interpreting and perceiving of the individual’s honest emotions,, or who are simply uncharitably and arrogantly airing their superiority complex, tend to forget that Christ himself "agonized in the Garden". They tend to forget Jesus calls man to live on this earth with the command never to be off-track in the journey of the cross, in the journey of self denial, and in the journey of total obedience to God’s will no matter if or when the process involves precisely painful and hurting dying moments to oneself. For, surely, death or the dying to oneself per the varieties of Calvary moments for each man are the paths for everyone ‘to die’ to oneself in order to ‘rise again’ into a new life of Christ. And these moments of dying to oneself could come under the form of life ‘Calvary’, or in the form of retributionary suffering in place of equivalent Purgatory suffering after death.
From Christ’s ‘passion & death’ act & mission it has become the believers’ follow-suit act to carry & take on their own ‘passion & death’ call, or their call how to realize their ‘baptismal’ new birth. Christ has made it known Christian believers have to have to share in his passion and death if they are to share in the glory of their own resurrection & living of the new life in him. This, like for him, has to be every Christian’s rite and path of passage from the natural life on earth into the ‘heavenly characterized’ supernatural life after death, and even before actual death.
This was the reason Christ actually resigned himself not to ask the Father to take his disciples out of the world, and to insulate them away from the rejecting world. Implied here is that Christ knew there would be the necessary hurting, and agonizing by his disciples, as he left them at the mercy of the world’s rejections and persecutions. But he did ask the Father to protect them, and to care for them amidst their hurting and agonizing from their rejections and persecutions. And throughout most of our Good News Salvation Series Chapters, particularly the 10th chapter, which covers Divine Providence in the material/earthly way, we have comprehensively discussed how God actually intervenes in man’s daily or moment to moment needs in varied sacramental, spiritual, and providential ways. Indeed, his unfailing assurance, as was often quoted already in the mission chapters, is to be remembered from his words, "Come to me you who labor and are burdened. I shall give you rest; for my yoke is easy, and my burden light."
Hence, as we are under the ever watchful care and loving providence of God, our attitude and orientation should be to submit with confident resignation to the care of God. God will at the very least buffer us against them shortcomings, troubles, and persecutions. Our presence of mind and heart should be that we are in the hands of God. The troubles and the heartaches before us are oftentimes beyond our control. More than likely, all the bad elements in the universe, both the preternatural forces, – the evil spirits & demons, and the worst of human malice & misdeeds are involved in their conspiracy at creating the problems causing man great grief. But in the face of such formidable setbacks, much as we would attempt usually futile and vain human solutions, our best recourse is with the supernatural power. God is at all times our best ally against superhuman harm, danger, barriers, and actual evil deeds.
In the midst of all these we might as well get used to, if need be the embarrassment, the hurt, and even the injury. And any of these could seem to preoccupy us specifically whichever is most hurting to us. And so it may happen, for some of us we would be forgetful a while of the Divine and Omnipotent presence of God, and of his watchful dominions of Angels cordoning us against real dangers. The fact is the experience would seem to be harrowing dying experience for us. But so be it! We are never to stop believing, never to stop turning to our faith in Jesus Christ, our Savior. Surely that is why he is our Savior. He is there at all times and in all our needs precisely in order to be our saving Power over all our enemies and in lieu of our human weakness. Our Lord told us, "Be not afraid!" And our Pope John Paul II, of recent memory, has constantly re-echoed this hope assurances of the Lord by his ever repeating Christ’s exhortation: "Be not afraid", indeed!
And so back to the referred to one-liner, a sad saint being an unhappy saint, we are not to be ashamed and to lose face and honor if we get ridiculed by our being weak to cry and being saddened for the evil done to us by our adversaries. It does not essentially belong to us to defend ourselves, or to be strong for ourselves. The Lord Jesus Christ alone is our defender, is alone our very strength how and when we would find solace, joy, and even some relief according to his providential time and Divine scheme for our own good and for the greater glory of God.
Besides, when we attempt to maximize the recourse to human and natural means and tools in redressing the world triggered personal wrongs & grievances or setbacks, how often do we experience and realize how puny and small we were versus the total affront and conspiratorial attacks of the enemy, whether from the seen/human enemies or the unseen/spirit enemies.
From 1 Peter 5:9, St. Peter writes, "Resist him, solid in our faith, realizing that the brotherhood of believers is undergoing the same sufferings throughout the world."
Of course, we are not prevented from not leaving any stone un-turned in trying to apply all the legal and appropriate assistance that could provide us protection and defense. But we are to realize, as we are to remember always, that oftentimes what we are against are enemies working by forces beyond us: principalities and powers.
Remember again that the Scriptures say: if God is with us, never mind who could be against us.
Now, we are to repeat here the idea and the necessary act of our identifying and uniting our own human suffering with the Divine sacrificial Lamb Suffering offered up to the Father with Christ according to the design, plan, and realization of God’s work of salvation. I.e. our suffering is to be participation in that Divine plan & mission of restoring back to God the order of the whole universe, beginning with man. The world will keep treating us cursed under our particular state of grave suffering, and thus for it will mark us as a pariah people: ex communicated away from them by them, and reduced to nothing in life. But in reality, if our particular state of suffering is the will of God for us, this is the ultimate ticket required of us by God if we are to belong with His Son into Heaven. And in life this and no other is the way of passage from this earthly life into the eternal life, in the life of Christ through grace. Remember well: the narrow path, not the wide road, is the way to the Kingdom of God.
With the invoking of the Holy Spirit let us be enabled with the understanding of human suffering as symbolized by the ‘crosses’ of life. Let us engage Christ’s irrevocable call that we carry the cross. Let us indeed embrace this opportunity to do participate in Christ’s loving sacrificial atoning to the Father for our sins and the sins of our fellow men. And let us by this way be enabled to effectually gain the Father’s pleasure & gratification. And likewise, let us receive God gifting us back with his Son, man’s heavenly food for our souls via the sacrament of the Eucharist, which we receive back upon our offering up with Christ our own personal sacrificial life suffering. For this is the most gratuitous and marvelous reality according as Jesus has prefaced his actual breaking up of his Body with his breaking up of his bread of life for us at then at the Last Supper right before he was lifted up on the Cross, and continually on each re-celebrating per his command of the same Eucharistic Calvary sacrifice. For, while to the Father goes up our united offering of suffering together with Christ; and from the Father comes back to us Christ’s physical uniting with us per the Eucharist. And so being united with Christ per the Eucharist via our own Calvary of the Cross with Christ we become empowered. Rev. Fr. Edwin Music says, "Through the cross, Jesus gives us grace that is stronger than sin, stronger than temptation, and stronger than death".
And so like we have stated from the outset this Christian iconography, the imagery of the cross, or of the crucifix: Christ hanging on the cross is a most elevated artistic and religious iconography. For the world, it is ever an object of scandal and ridicule; but for the believers it is an object for reverence and a memorial of faith.
However, our crux of the message here is precisely what it has stood for at all times, and what it continually stands for: the reality of Christian suffering in the reality of salvation.
We already mentioned St. Peter warning us against inappropriate suffering; but he also encourages us as Christians, however, how we "...ought not to be ashamed to suffer". He said, we "...should rather glorify God in virtue of that name...” Further on, he writes in verse 19 from the same verses above, 1Peter 4:16, "...Accordingly, let those who suffer as God’s will require continuing in good deeds, and entrusting their lives to a faithful Creator."
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