by James Martin
Here are a few thoughts on those questions.
First, you don’t need to look for your crosses. Life gives them to you. Some young people tell me, sincerely, that they feel that they don’t have enough suffering in their lives. It’s tempting to say darkly, “Just wait.” Whether it’s a catastrophic illness, an accident, a death in the family, a fractured relationship, financial worries, long-term loneliness, trouble in school, or struggles on the job, problems will come. And the real cross is the one that you don’t want—because otherwise it’s hardly a cross. Remember that Jesus did not court death, nor did he beg for the Cross in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Cross eventually came to him. And, of course, the Cross is not the result of sin. It’s true that some suffering is the result of bad or immoral decisions. But most suffering is not. Even the sinless one suffered.
Second, we are invited by God, as Jesus was, to accept our crosses. This does not mean that we accept things unthinkingly, like a dumb animal laboring under a burden. Nor do bromides like “Offer it up” solve the problem of suffering. The idea of offering one’s pain to God is helpful in some situations, but not in others. For many years, my mother visited my grandmother in her nursing home. Residing in that home was an elderly Catholic sister, confined to a wheelchair because of debilitating pain. One day her religious superior came to visit. When the sister spoke of the pain she was enduring, her superior replied, “Think of Jesus on the Cross.” The elderly sister said, “He was only on the Cross for three hours.” Some advice does more harm than good.
What does it mean, then, to accept our crosses?
To begin with, it means understanding that suffering is part of everyone’s life. Accepting our cross means that at some point—after the shock, frustration, sadness, and even rage—we must accept that some things cannot be changed. That’s why acceptance is not a masochistic stance, but a realistic one. Here is where Christianity parts ways with Buddhism, which says that suffering is an illusion. No, says Jesus from the Cross, suffering is part of the human reality. The disciples had a difficult time understanding this—they wanted a leader who would deliver them from pain, not one who would endure it himself. We often have a difficult time with this too. But acceptance is what Jesus invites us to on the Cross.
Acceptance also means not passing along any bitterness that you feel about your suffering. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t talk about it, complain about it, or even cry about it with friends or family. And of course we are invited to be honest in prayer about our suffering. Even Jesus poured out his heart to Abba in the Garden of Gethsemane.
But if you’re angry about your boss, or school, or your family, you don’t pass along that anger to others and magnify their suffering. Having a lousy boss is no reason to be mean to your family. Struggling through a rotten family situation is no excuse for being insensitive to your coworkers. Problems at school do not mean that you can be cruel to your parents. Christ did not lash out at people when he was suffering, even when he was lashed by the whip.
As I said, this does not mean that you do not share your suffering with others. Pain and suffering resulting, to take one example, from abuse or trauma often need to be shared with others (whether with friends or professional counselors) as part of the healing process. Also, people living with long-term challenges like, say, raising a child with special needs or caring for an elderly parent often find comfort and support by speaking with others in similar circumstances. Like Jesus, you can allow others to help you carry the cross. Jesus was not too proud to let Simon of Cyrene come to his aid. If your friends offer to help, let them.
Thus, there is a difference between having a fight with your teenage son and then being insensitive at work, and sharing the challenges (and joys) of a special-needs child in a support group. It is the difference between passing on suffering and sharing it.
In short, your cross shouldn’t become someone else’s.
Third, when Jesus speaks about those who “lose their life,” he is not talking only about physical death. Christians believe that they are promised eternal life if they believe in Jesus and follow his way. But there are other deaths that come before the final one. We are called to let some parts of our lives die, so that other parts may live. Is a desire for money preventing you from being more compassionate on the job? Perhaps your need for wealth needs to die. Are you so yoked to your own comfort that you don’t allow other people’s needs to impinge on yours? Maybe your selfishness needs to die so that you can experience a rebirth of generosity. Is pride keeping you from listening to other people’s constructive criticism and therefore stunting your spiritual growth? Maybe all these things need to die too.
In Christian spiritual circles this is called “dying to self.” What keeps you from being more loving, more free, more mature, more open to following God’s will? Can you let those things die? If you do, you will surely “find” your life, because dying to self means living for God. This is in part what Jesus means about those who desperately try to save their lives. That kind of “saving” holds on to the parts of ourselves that keep us enslaved to the old ways of doing things. Trying to keep those things alive can lead to death. Letting them die allows us to truly live.
Fourth, wait for the resurrection. In every cross, there is an invitation to new life in some way, and often in a mysterious way. To me it seems unclear whether Jesus understood precisely what would happen after he entrusted himself to Abba in the Garden. Clearly he gave himself over entirely to the Father. But did he know where that would lead? There are indications of his foreknowledge, such as Jesus’s challenge to the Jewish leaders, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”; John explicitly labels this a foretelling of the Resurrection.22 But Jesus’s agony in the Garden and his cry of abandonment on the Cross seems to indicate that even he didn’t know what kind of new life the Father had in store. Perhaps even Jesus was surprised on Easter. For me this makes his self-gift even more astonishing.
This is why Christians speak of meeting God in the Cross. By ignoring or failing to embrace the Cross we miss opportunities to know God in a deeper way. The Cross is often where we meet God because our vulnerability can make us more open to God’s grace. Many recovering alcoholics point to the acceptance of their disease as the moment when they began to find new life. This is why Thomas Merton could write, “In tribulation, God teaches us. The most unfortunate people in the world are those who know no tribulations.”23
Fifth, God’s gift is often not what we expect. Mary Magdalene discovered that on Easter Sunday. And—as with Mary—sometimes it takes time to grasp that what we are experiencing is a resurrection. Later on, as we will see, the other disciples will have a hard time recognizing Jesus. As the apostles discovered on Easter, resurrection also does not come when you expect it. It may take years for it to come at all. And, it’s usually difficult to describe, because it’s your resurrection. It may not make sense to other people.
When I was a Jesuit novice, as I mentioned, I worked in a hospital for the seriously ill in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Every Friday the hospital chaplaincy team ran a discussion group. One woman, named Doris, who was confined to a wheelchair, told us something that completely surprised me. She used to think of her chair as a cross, which would have been my reaction. But lately, she had started to see it as her resurrection. “My wheelchair helps me get around,” she said. “Without it, I wouldn’t be able to do anything. Life would be so dull without it.”
Her comment has stayed with me for twenty-five years. It was so unexpected. And so personal. And so hard for me to understand. Doris’s cross led to her highly personal resurrection. It was a reminder that where the world sees only the cross, the Christian sees the possibility of something else.
Finally, nothing is impossible with God. That’s the message I return to most often. On the first day of the week, the Gospel of John tells us that most of the disciples were cowering behind closed doors, out of fear. After Good Friday, the disciples were terrified
. Earlier, on Holy Thursday, we are told by Matthew and Mark that all of them fled from the Garden, in fear. That evening Peter denied knowing Jesus. If they were afraid before Jesus was sentenced to death, imagine their reactions after seeing him marched through the streets of Jerusalem, nailed to a cross, and hung there until dead. Their leader was executed as an enemy of the state.
Locked behind closed doors after the death of the person in whom they had placed all their hopes—is there a more vivid image of fear?
The disciples fail to realize—again—that they are dealing with the Living God, the same one whose message to Mary at the Annunciation was “Nothing will be impossible with God.” They could not see beyond the walls of that closed room. They were unwilling to accept that God was greater than their imaginations.
Perhaps they can be forgiven—Jesus was dead, after all. And who could have predicted the Resurrection? Then again, maybe we shouldn’t let the disciples off so easily. Jesus had always confounded their expectations—healing the sick, stilling a storm, raising the dead—so perhaps they should have expected the unexpected. But they did not.
Often we find ourselves incapable of believing that God might have new life in store for us. “Nothing can change,” we say. “There is no hope.” This is when we end up mired in despair, which can sometimes be a reflection of pride. That is, we think that we know better than God. It is a way of saying, “God does not have the power to change this situation.” What a dark and dangerous path is despair, far darker than death.
How many of us believe parts of our lives are dead? How many believe that parts of our family, our country, our world, our church cannot come to life? How many of us feel bereft of the hope of change?
This is when I turn to the Resurrection. Often I return to the image of the terrified disciples cowering behind closed doors. We are not called to live in that room. We are called to emerge from our hiding places and to accompany Mary, weeping sometimes, searching always, and ultimately blinded by the dawn of Jesus’s new life—surprised—delighted and moved to joy. We are called to believe what she has seen: he is risen.
THE RESURRECTION IS A message of unparalleled hope—and unparalleled joy. A seriously underappreciated part of the Christian life, joy undergirds Jesus’s preaching, is the fruit of most of his miracles, and is the most natural response to the Resurrection. Consider how often the word is mentioned in some form in the Gospels:
“Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank you, Father . . .’”
“The entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.”
“You have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”
“Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.”
“While in their joy they were disbelieving . . .”
“The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”24
The most joyful day in the disciples’ lives was Easter Sunday. We’ll look at two more Easter appearances in the next two chapters, which are characterized first by confusion, but then joy. So, with joy in mind, let me end this chapter with one of the more amusing things that happened during the pilgrimage. It happened in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection.
ALTHOUGH THE CHURCH OF the Holy Sepulchre is closed from eight at night to four in the morning, on some evenings pilgrims can be “locked in” to spend the night in prayer. Father Doan had casually mentioned that to George and me early in our stay at the PBI. George’s ears perked up. “Oh, I definitely want to do that,” he said over dinner one night.
Did I? Not really. I worried that, like the apostles, I wouldn’t be able to stay awake. Also, I was concerned that the experience might be too intense. Even standing before the Tomb of Christ for a few minutes overwhelmed me—imagine being there for an entire night! So I declined. George looked disappointed.
The big day came near the end of our pilgrimage. That evening we dined at the Jesuit community with Peter, an American Jesuit who taught religious studies at Bethlehem University. Like all the Jesuits I had met there, Peter was highly knowledgeable about the region’s politics, and he also knew the city well. Even though we had been in the Holy Land for almost two weeks, it was still amusing to hear the holy sites referred to in casual conversation: “The traffic from Bethlehem was a nightmare today!”
Around seven o’clock, George excused himself so that he could make it to the Holy Sepulchre in time for the closing. Peter said, “Oh that’s a wonderful thing to do. You won’t be sorry.” Instantly I was filled with regret. What a bad Jesuit I was, missing out on an evening vigil before the Tomb of Christ. But by the time my regret registered, it was too late. George had cleaned his plate, left the table, and departed for what promised to be a night of mystical prayer.
The next morning I rose early. There was, I had been reliably informed, a Mass at the Holy Sepulchre celebrated by the Franciscan priests at seven thirty. If I couldn’t spend the entire night in rapt prayer at the holiest spot in Christendom, at least I could begin the day with a Mass there. On my way to breakfast I noticed George’s door was closed.
Apparently, he was still asleep, which was to be expected given that he must have returned home at four in the morning. I wolfed down a breakfast of toast and juice and arrived at the church with time to spare.
But there was no Mass. The friendly Franciscan friar, an American whom I had come to know, said that no liturgy had been scheduled for that time. “By the way,” he said, “your friend left early last night.”
“Really?” I said. “What time?”
“Around midnight,” he said. I thought it strange, so asked why.
“Beats me,” he said.
While I puzzled over that news, I noticed that the line to enter the Tomb was the shortest I had yet seen, only two or three people. “Shhh!” said someone beside me. “Mass is starting.” I hung around the entrance to the Tomb, and a priest approached us, wearing his Mass vestments and holding a chalice and paten. He had a vaguely Gallic air, so I asked in French if I could join him. “Ja,” he said and started speaking German to a sister standing behind me. We entered the Tomb.
In that cramped space, perhaps three by five feet, he began the Mass on the stone slab that I had kissed. Next to the German sister was another sister who introduced herself; she was from Burma. After Mass had begun, another woman pushed her way into the chamber. I had noticed her over the past few days praying her Rosary near the Tomb. She was either very holy, like Anna, the woman who spent “night and day” in the Temple and who greeted Mary and Joseph and Jesus, or very crazy.25 Or both. Maybe because I was squeezed in next to the crazy/holy woman who kept poking me in the ribs, my first and only Mass in the Tomb of Christ wasn’t especially moving. Again I regretted not going to the vigil with George.
After Mass I popped by some favorite sites in the Old City and spent an hour in prayer at the Pool of Bethesda. For good measure, I purchased small souvenirs in the market. For my nephews, ages twelve and five, I bought a variety of headgear—yarmulkes (or kippas) worn by the majority of the Jewish men in Jerusalem; taquiyas, the colorfully embroidered round caps worn by many Muslim men, and even a bright red fez, which I knew my older nephew would like. For a Jewish friend’s son, age ten, I bought a handful of rubber wristbands stenciled with a Hebrew saying that the shopkeeper promised was the Shema prayer (“Hear O Israel, the Lord is One”), but which turned out to be the name of the shop.
When I checked my watch it was lunchtime. On my way to the PBI dining room I ran into George. I looked forward to hearing about his night of prayer, and started to regret my decision all over again.
“So how was your night?”
“Not what I expected!” he said.
“What happened? Weren’t you alone?”
“Well, I thought I was going to be alone,” he said. “So I got there around eight, just in time for the big closing of the door, and
the caretaker let me in. But just as the guy was closing the door, a group of about twenty tourists from God knows where scooted in. And they were incredibly noisy. I thought, Well it’s a big church. I’m sure there will be a quiet place to pray. So I went over to the tomb. Anyway, they followed me, and then started to take out their cameras and rustle their bags of food, and talk some more, and eat, and take pictures and talk, and walk around, and eat some more, and they would just not shut up.”
“What were they talking about?”
“I don’t know!” he said. “But they sure had a lot to say!”
After an hour of vainly hoping the tourists would move on, George decided to withdraw to a more secluded spot. So he walked downstairs to the Chapel of the Finding of the True Cross, a lovely space where St. Helena, the mother of the emperor Constantine supposedly discovered the remnants of the cross. (The chapel is most likely not from the time of Constantine, but was built on the remains of a quarry dug three centuries later.) I knew the chapel, an ideal place to pray, away from most tourists, dark, quiet, secluded. George sat on a small wooden chair near the altar.
“Then some priest comes out of nowhere and says, ‘Hey! You can’t pray there.’ I guess you can’t sit in those chairs.”
George searched for another spot. He chose one of the most unusual altars, positioned in front of a window affording a view of the side of the hill of Golgotha. Here the architects had removed a portion of a wall to expose the side of the hill on which Jesus was crucified. A window was placed there, so that the faithful can see the chalky white hill. George figured that the tourists were busy chatting, the priest wouldn’t be bothered, and so this would be his place to pray for the entire evening. He settled in and closed his eyes.