“Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.” (1 Peter 2:21)
Often, we come to the crucifixion as spectators. Meditating on Christ’s Passion, we may be overwhelmed with grief, filled with compassion, or bowed in contrition. All this has its place. However, as St Peter makes clear in the opening quotation, Christ does not want us to come to Calvary purely as spectators – however pious and empathic – he wants us to be understudies, to follow his example, to walk in his steps. He expects us to come as active participants, suffering with Him and for Him.
In Catholic circles, particularly among older generations, it is not unusual to hear people talk about ‘carrying their cross’. While it is certainly beautiful to identify our suffering with Christ’s, this can sometimes become no more than a pious colloquialism that people use to refer to ‘just about anything bothersome in their lives’. This is to risk trivialising the meaning of the cross. For all human beings suffer, but the cross of Christ refers to suffering of a particular kind.
The first letter of St Peter is very helpful in enabling us to identify three things that are particularly distinctive about the suffering of Christ. First, Christ suffers unjustly. In the words of St Peter, “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth” (1 Peter 2: 22). Second, Christ suffers patiently. St Peter again says: “When they hurled insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly.” (1 Peter 2:23). Third, Christ suffers willingly to support God’s purposes. St Peter goes on: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” (1 Peter 2: 24).
The goal of this reflection is to explore each of these three dimensions of Christ’s suffering more deeply, before considering how to identify this type of suffering in our own lives.
Suffering unjustly
Despite spending His earthly life doing much good and no wrong, Christ finds himself unjustly overwhelmed by every dimension of human evil. It is as if the Passion is designed to incorporate all the different kinds of suffering that humankind can endure: miscarriage of justice at the Sanhedrin; abdication of responsibility by Pontius Pilate; mob violence from the pilgrim crowd; sadistic torture and utter humiliation at the hands of the Roman army; betrayal and denial from closest friends; and even abandonment by God. The very extreme and multifaceted nature of Christ’s Passion somehow reassures us that there is no suffering that we could possibly experience of which He has no intimate understanding.
On the cross, Christ does battle against evil. As Carmelite St Edith Stein puts it:
“The burden of the Cross that Christ assumed is the burden of corrupted human nature, with all its consequences in sin and suffering to which fallen humanity is subject. The meaning of the way of the cross is to carry this burden out of the world”.[1]
Christ ultimately conquers evil, but perhaps not in the way we might wish or expect. Our notions of conquest are often more at home in a Marvel movie than in the Gospel. We can just imagine how a Marvel version of the Passion of Christ would probably culminate with Christ descending from the Cross as his followers blow up the Roman Governor’s Palace. This may not be so far from what some of the disciples themselves would have wished. But Christ’s victory over evil operates on a much deeper level.
To understand this, it is important to recognise that evil is a kind of contagion that is forever self-propagating. The mechanism through which evil typically propagates itself is retaliation. This is a natural human reaction to being on the receiving end of evil; particularly injustice. And retaliation beguilingly promises both to bring the initial evil to an end and to provide relief to the one that is harmed. But, in fact, it fails to do either. Instead, evil spreads even further and the wounds inflicted simply fester in the absence of forgiveness. The only way to conquer evil is to break the cycle of violence, as St Paul says, “Do not allow yourself to be conquered by evil, but rather conquer evil with good” (Romans 12:21). This is exactly what Christ does on the cross.
Suffering patiently
Christ’s patience in suffering is evident throughout his Passion. This is beautifully captured by the prophet Isaiah who writes: “He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah, 53:7). Christ’s meekness means that he does not display any kind of anger or resistance towards suffering inflicted. He even remains silent before the false accusations levelled against him at His trumped-up trial in the Sanhedrin (Mark 14:61), and again before Pontius Pilate (Mark 15:3-5). Far from seeking retaliation, Christ actually forgives His executioners: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
Suffering willingly
Christ is not cornered by his enemies but rather undergoes the Passion of his own volition. Indeed, the Eucharistic Prayer speaks of “a death he freely accepted”. By the time He reached the garden of Gethsemane, Christ was already a significant distance outside of the city of Jerusalem. From there, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to slip away into the night. But instead, He sits and waits to be arrested, wrestling mightily with His own human nature, before He is finally able to submit to the will of the Father (Mark, 14: 35-36). For this reason, He can rightly say to Pontius Pilate, “You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above” (John 19:11).
Suffering willingly sounds impossibly difficult. But according to the Carmelite saints, suffering actually becomes easier when we embrace it willingly. St John of the Cross corroborates the teaching of Christ himself when he says:
“Our Lord proclaimed through Saint Matthew: ‘My yoke is easy and my burden light’ (Matthew 11:30), his burden being the cross. If people resolutely submit to the carrying of the cross for the sake of God […], they will discover in it great sweetness and relief”.[2]
One way of understanding this is that when we suffer unwillingly, we suffer twice, as we suffer both the suffering itself as well as suffering about the fact that we are suffering (a kind of ‘meta-suffering’ so to speak). St Teresa of Jesus highlights this by saying:
“If we do not embrace the cross, but drag it along, it will hurt and weary us and break us to pieces. However, if we love the cross, it is easy to bear”.[3]
Identifying our cross
Overall, St Peter summarises his message as: “If you suffer for doing good and you endure it; this is commendable before God” (1 Peter 2: 20). It follows from all this that we too can legitimately speak of ‘carrying the cross’ on occasions when we suffer unjustly, suffer patiently, and suffer willingly. Most of the time, our crosses are likely to be much more modest than anything Christ endured. Our suffering will often be psychological and emotional rather than physical, although no less real for that – so was His.
To find evidence of the cross of Christ in our lives, we can start by looking for the different ways in which we may be affected by injustice. For some, it may take the form of religious persecution. For others, it might be discrimination or disrespect inflicted by racism, sexism, or other kinds of prejudice. Still others may be unjustly deprived of reward or recognition for their efforts, or perhaps unfairly accused of something that they never did. If any of these situations befall us, and we endure them both patiently and willingly, we can rightly be said to have a share in carrying the cross of Christ.
Final caveats
All this comes with two very important caveats though.
The first important caveat is that suffering patiently and willingly absolutely does not mean that injustice should not be redressed. God is just and justice is a cardinal virtue. Remember that even Jesus, who was a victim of corrupt human justice, entrusts himself to “the one who judges justly” (1 Peter 2:23). In our case, human institutions may provide real opportunities to ensure that justice is done, however imperfectly. From ombudsmen to law enforcement, we can and should avail ourselves of the justice systems at our disposal. No one is advocating ‘doormat Christianity’. The point of carrying the cross is to avoid retaliation, to stop the evil inflicted upon us from taking root within us and spreading beyond us, but not to circumvent the application of justice. The second important caveat is that however patiently and willingly we may suffer, we will still be wounded. There is no point in pretending that it does not hurt. Christ’s wounds were real and so are ours. The wounds inflicted upon us by human injustice demand our attention. We need and deserve healing for ourselves. But also, for the sake of others, we must ensure that our wounds do not fester and become breeding grounds from which further evil may resurface. Again, this entails actively seeking out all the human and spiritual resources at our disposal. We may find solace in scripture and sacrament. We may seek spiritual direction or psychotherapy. Above all, we can profoundly identify our suffering with Christ’s, remembering the promise that “by His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).
[1] Teresa Benedicta of the Cross OCD (Edith Stein), The Hidden Life (p.91)
[2] John of the Cross OCD, Ascent II, 7.7
[3] Teresa of Jesus OCD, Meditation on the Song of Songs, 2.26
