Mystery of the Cross:

"God's passionate love for his people—for humanity—is at the same time a forgiving love. It is so great that it turns God against himself, his love against his justice. Here Christians can see a dim prefigurement of the "mystery of the Cross:" so great is God's love for man that by becoming man he follows him even into death, and so reconciles justice and love."(DEUS CARITAS EST,BENEDICT XVI)

Who, but Almighty God, has the power to transform our lives from misery to joy.? Who, but the True God, has the power to transform monstrous evil into even greater good, by taking on Himself, all of the evil, suffering, and misery man has brought into his life by Original and ongoing sin? (We should recall that such evil and suffering was only seen in the world consequent to man’s Original Choice to reject God and make a god of himself.)

Who, but Almighty God could take the pain, betrayal, sin, and suffering, such as mankind propagated through “The Holocaust” of Jewish believers in World War II, and give them, and the lives of such martyrs to the truth of the "One God" such a glorious meaning as indicated in the following excerpt from "Salvifici Doloris?"

"Christ's resurrection has revealed "the glory of the future age" and, at the same time, has confirmed "the boast of the cross": the glory that is hidden in the very suffering of Christ and which has been and is often mirrored in human suffering, as an expression of man's spiritual greatness. This glory must be acknowledged not only in the martyrs for the Faith but in many others also who, at times, even without belief in Christ, suffer and give their lives for the truth and for a just cause. In the sufferings of all of these people the great dignity of man is strikingly confirmed.(Pope John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris)

Who, but God, Himself, could make such evil and suffering, for all time, “The Way” to Eternal Life and a source of grace for believers of all ages through His Promised Messiah and His Church? In this divine mystery, God provides supernatural life through suffering borne out of love, and the “Wisdom of the Cross.” And “This Cross” is a mystery and a reality we are unable to avoid, or explain away, by any tricky philosophical musings, or phony religious beliefs which don’t meet the test of “truth,” as the pain and suffering in our own lives is transformed through faith in Jesus Christ into the joy of eternal life.

"Down through the centuries and generations it has been seen that in suffering there is concealed a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ, a special grace. To this grace many saints, such as Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Ignatius of Loyola and others, owe their profound conversion. A result of such a conversion is not only that the individual discovers the salvific meaning of suffering but above all that he becomes a completely new person. He discovers a new dimension, as it were, of his entire life and vocation. This discovery is a particular confirmation of the spiritual greatness which in man surpasses the body in a way that is completely beyond compare. When this body is gravely ill, totally incapacitated, and the person is almost incapable of living and acting, all the more do interior maturity and spiritual greatness become evident, constituting a touching lesson to those who are healthy and normal.(Pope John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris)

"This interior maturity and spiritual greatness in suffering are certainly the result of a particular conversion and cooperation with the grace of the Crucified Redeemer. It is he himself who acts at the heart of human sufferings through his Spirit of truth, through the consoling Spirit. It is he who transforms, in a certain sense, the very substance of the spiritual life, indicating for the person who suffers a place close to himself. It is he—as the interior Master and Guide—who reveals to the suffering brother and sister this wonderful interchange, situated at the very heart of the mystery of the Redemption."(Ibid)

"All of you who feel heavily the weight of the cross, you who are poor and abandoned, you who weep, you who are persecuted for justice, you who are ignored, you the unknown victims of suffering, take courage. You are the preferred children of the kingdom of God, the kingdom of hope, happiness and life. You are the brothers of the suffering Christ, and with Him, if you wish, you are saving the world."( Pope Paul VI)

"Suffering is, in itself, an experience of evil. But Christ has made suffering the firmest basis of the definitive good, namely the good of eternal salvation. By his suffering on the Cross, Christ reached the very roots of evil, of sin and death. He conquered the author of evil, Satan, and his permanent rebellion against the Creator. To the suffering brother or sister Christ discloses and gradually reveals the horizons of the Kingdom of God: the horizons of a world converted to the Creator, of a world free from sin, a world being built on the saving power of love. And slowly but effectively, Christ leads into this world, into this Kingdom of the Father, suffering man, in a certain sense through the very heart of his suffering. For suffering cannot be transformed and changed by a grace from outside, but from within. And Christ through his own salvific suffering is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of his Spirit of truth, his consoling Spirit. (Pope John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris)

"For whenever anyone bears the pain of unjust suffering because of consciousness of God, that is a grace. But what credit is there if you are patient when beaten for doing wrong? But if you are patient when you suffer for doing what is good, this is a grace before God. For to this you have been called, because Christ(who was innocent and persecuted for doing good) also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his footsteps."(1Peter 2:19:21)

"To all of you, brothers in trial, who are visited by suffering under a thousand forms, the(Second Vatican)council has a very special message. It feels on itself your pleading eyes, burning with fever or hollow with fatigue, questioning eyes which search in vain for the why of human suffering and which ask anxiously when and whence will come relief."(Pope Paul VI)

"Very dear brothers, we feel echoing deeply within our hearts as fathers and pastors your laments and your complaints. Our suffering is increased at the thought that it is not within our power to bring you bodily help nor the lessening of your physical sufferings, which physicians, nurses and all those dedicated to the service of the sick are endeavoring to relieve as best they can."(Ibid)

"But we have something deeper and more valuable to give you, the only truth capable of answering the mystery of suffering and of bringing you relief without illusion, and that is faith and union with the Man of Sorrows, with Christ the Son of God, nailed to the cross for our sins and for our salvation. Christ did not do away with suffering. He did not even wish to unveil to us entirely the mystery of suffering. He took suffering upon Himself and this is enough to make you understand all its value."(Ibid. Pope Paul VI)

The "Cross" is the symbol and metaphor for the sufferings of this life, and for overcoming them through "detachment" from natural pleasures and desires. Suffering is a problem for mankind, and the pervasive reality of its presence in our life forces us to question ourselves and to seek answers and solutions to the mystery of our existence. However, it is by "embracing the Cross" and undergoing the radical detachment from our natural selfishness that we come to experience the New Heaven and New Earth, even in this life, as implied by St John of the Cross, below:

"Christ speaks of them who are very forgetful and dull with respect to that which touches their salvation, and have a correspondingly greater ardour and shrewdness with respect to things of the world. So much so that in the Gospel Christ calls them children of this world, and says of them that they are more prudent and acute in their affairs than are the children of light in their own. And thus they are as nothing in God's business, whereas in the world's business they are everything. And these are the truly avaricious, who have extended and dispersed their desire and joy on things created, and this with such affection that they cannot be satisfied; on the contrary, their desire and their thirst grow all the more because they are farther withdrawn from the only source that could satisfy them, which is God. For it is of these that God Himself speaks through Jeremias, saying: 'They have forsaken Me, Who am the fountain of living water, and they have digged to themselves broken cisterns that can hold no water.' And this is the reason why the covetous man finds naught among the creatures wherewith he can quench his thirst, but only that which increases it. These persons are they that fall into countless kinds of sin through love of temporal blessings and the evils which afflict them are innumerable.(St John of the Cross, "The Ascent," Bk III, Ch. XVI)

"For, through his not giving heed to setting his heart upon the law of God because of temporal blessings, the soul of the covetous man departs far from God according to his memory, understanding and will, forgetting Him as though He were not his God, which comes to pass because he has made for himself a god of money and of temporal blessings, as Saint Paul says when he describes avarice as slavery to idols. For this fourth degree leads a man as far as to forget God, and to set his heart, which he should have set formally upon God, formally upon money, as though he had no god beside.(St John of the Cross, "The Ascent," Bk III, Ch. XVI)

"He who withdraws his joy from temporal blessings will acquire the virtue of liberality, which is one of the principal attributes of God, and can in no wise coexist with covetousness. Apart from this, he will acquire liberty of soul, clarity of reason, rest, tranquillity and peaceful confidence in God and a true reverence and worship of God which comes from the will. He will find greater joy and recreation in the creatures through his detachment from them, for he cannot rejoice in them if he look upon them with attachment to them as to his own. Attachment is an anxiety that, like a bond, ties the spirit down to the earth and allows it no enlargement of heart. He will also acquire, in his detachment from things, a clear conception of them, so that he can well understand the truths relating to them, both naturally and supernaturally. He will therefore enjoy them very differently from one who is attached to them, and he will have a great advantage and superiority over such a one. For, while he enjoys them according to their truth, the other enjoys them according to their falseness; the one appreciates the best side of them and the other the worst; the one rejoices in their substance; the other, whose sense is bound to them, in their accident. For sense cannot grasp or attain to more than the accident, but the spirit, purged of the clouds and species of accident, penetrates the truth and worth of things, for this is its object. Wherefore joy, like a cloud, darkens the judgment, since there can be no voluntary joy in creatures without voluntary attachment, even as there can be no joy which is passion when there is no habitual attachment in the heart; and the renunciation and purgation of such joy leave the judgment clear, even as the mists leave the air clear when they are scattered.(St John of the Cross, "The Ascent," Bk III, Ch. XVI)

"This man, then, rejoices in all things -- since his joy is dependent upon none of them -- as if he had them all; and this other, through looking upon them with a particular sense of ownership, loses in a general sense all the pleasure of them all. This former man, having none of them in his heart, possesses them all, as Saint Paul says, in great freedom. This latter man, inasmuch as he has something of them through the attachment of his will, neither has nor possesses anything; it is rather they that have possessed his heart, and he is, as it were, a sorrowing captive. Wherefore, if he desire to have a certain degree of joy in creatures, he must of necessity have an equal degree of disquietude and grief in his heart, since it is seized and possessed by them. But he that is detached is untroubled by anxieties, either in prayer or apart from it; and thus, without losing time, he readily gains great spiritual treasure. But the other man loses everything, running to and fro upon the chain by which his heart is attached and bound; and with all his diligence he can still hardly free himself for a short time from this bond of thought and rejoicing by which his heart is bound. The spiritual man, then, must restrain the first motion of his heart towards creatures, remembering the premiss which we have here laid down, that there is naught wherein a man must rejoice, save in his service of God, and in his striving for His glory and honour in all things, directing all things solely to this end and turning aside from vanity in them, looking in them neither for his own joy nor for his consolation."(Ibid "The Ascent" Ch. XVI)

"There is another very great and important benefit in this detachment of the rejoicing from creatures -- namely, that it leaves the heart free for God. This is the dispositive foundation of all the favours which God will grant to the soul, and without this disposition He grants them not. And they are such that, even from the temporal standpoint, for one joy which the soul renounces for love of Him and for the perfection of the Gospel, "He will give him a hundred in this life," as His Majesty promises in the same Gospel.("The Ascent," Bk III, Ch. XX)

God uses suffering and the Crosses that come to us to expose our weaknesses and to teach us the truth about love and our need for Him and others. And this is a new experience for the proud man, and once he understands it, and comes to terms with the good that has come to him through his suffering, he finds he is capable of a new sense of "joy." As the hardness of his heart crumbles under the weight of his suffering, the proud man begins to understand the meaning of Christ's words, "Learn of me, for I am meek and humble of heart." For through humility, man begins to experience the mystery of God's mercy in suffering, and to know the goodness and supernatural joy hidden in the power of the Cross.

In the words of Thomas Merton, "Suffering, on the natural level, is always opposed to natural joy. There is no opposition between natural suffering and supernatural joy. Joy, in the supernatural order, is simply an aspect of charity. It is inseparable from the love that is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. But when sanctity is not yet mature, its joy is not always recognizable. It can too easily be buried under pain. But true charity, far from being diminished by suffering, uses suffering as it uses everything else: for the increase of its own immanent vitality. Charity is the expression of a divine life within us, and this life, if we allow it to have its way, will grow and thrive most in the very presence of all that seems to destroy life and to quench its flame. A life that blazes with a hundredfold brilliance in the face of death is therefore invincible. Its joy cannot fail. It conquers everything. It knows no suffering. Like the Risen Christ, who is its Author and Principle, it knows no death." (Thomas Merton, "Saints For Now")

"The Cross is the staff whereby one may reach him, and whereby the road is greatly lightened and made easy. Wherefore our Lord said through St. Matthew: My yoke is easy and my burden is light, which burden is the Cross. For if a man resolve to submit himself to carrying his cross—that is to say if he resolve to desire in truth to meet trials and to bear them in all things for God’s sake, he will find in them great relief and sweetness wherewith he may travel on this road, detached from all things and desiring nothing." (The Ascent of Mount Cannel, n, 7. in The Complete Works of St. John of the Cross, translated and editedby E. Allison Peers (Westminster: Newman, 1945), vol. I, p. 91

The following comments of St John of the Cross are directed to those who are able to receive them, i.e., contemplatives who are serious about achieving perfection. They are for those whose Love would be called "radical" in today's spiritual milieu. For they have resolved to carry the Cross with Jesus, and are willing to meet trials and to bear them for God's sake. And such radical commitment to detachment from all things, prepares the soul to receive the perfect gift, the one thing necessary, the Joy of the fullness of God in a transforming configuration of the soul with Christ:

"To endeavor always to incline oneself, not to that which is easier, but to that which is more difficult; not to that which is tasty, but to that which is more bitter; not to that which is more pleasing, but to that which is less pleasing; not to that which gives rest, but to that which demands effort; not to that which is a consolation, but to that which is a source of sorrow; not to that which is more, but to that which is less; not to the lofty and precious, but to the lowly and despicable; not to that which is to be something, but to that which is to be nothing; not to be seeking the best in temporal things, but the worst, and to desire to enter in all nakedness and emptiness and poverty through Christ in whatever there is in the world. (St. John of the Cross, op. cit., Book I, Chap. 13)

POPE JOHN PAUL II

"In order to discover the profound meaning of suffering, following the revealed Word of God, we must open ourselves wide to the human subject in his manifold potentiality. We must above all accept the light of revelation not only insofar as it expresses the transcendent order of justice but also insofar as it illuminates this order with Love, as the definitive source of everything that exists. Love is also the fullest source of the answer to the question of the meaning of suffering. This answer has been given by God to man in the cross of Jesus Christ.

"St. Paul speaks of true joy in the letter to the Colossians: "I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake." A source of joy is found in the overcoming of the sense of the uselessness of suffering, a feeling that is sometimes very strongly rooted in human suffering. This feeling not only consumes the person interiorly, but seems to make him a burden to others. The person feels condemned to receive help and assistance from others, and at the same time seems useless to himself. The discovery of the salvific meaning of suffering in union with Christ transforms this depressing feeling. Faith in sharing in the suffering of Christ brings with it the interior certainty that the suffering person "completes what is lacking in Christ's afflictions"; the certainty that in the spiritual dimension of the work of Redemption he is serving, like Christ, the salvation of his brothers and sisters. Therefore, he is carrying out an irreplaceable service.

"In the Body of Christ, which is ceaselessly born of the cross of the Redeemer, it is precisely suffering permeated by the spirit of Christ's sacrifice that is the irreplaceable mediator and author of the good things which are indispensable for the world's salvation. It is suffering, more than anything else, which clears the way for the grace which transforms human souls. Suffering, more than anything else, makes present in the history of humanity the powers of the Redemption. In that "cosmic" struggle between the spiritual powers of good and evil, spoken of in the letter to the Ephesians, human sufferings, united to the redemptive suffering of Christ, constitute a special support for the powers of good, and open the way to the victory of these salvific powers.

"In the letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul deals still more fully with the theme of this "birth of power in weakness," this spiritual tempering of man in the midst of trials and tribulations, which is the particular vocation of those who share in Christ's sufferings. "More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us." Suffering, as it were, contains a special call to the virtue which man must exercise on his own part. And this is the virtue of perseverance in bearing whatever disturbs and causes harm. In doing this, the individual unleashes hope, which maintains in him the conviction that suffering will not get the better of him, that it will not deprive him of his dignity as a human being, a dignity linked to awareness of the meaning of life. And indeed this meaning makes itself known together with the working of God's love, which is the supreme gift of the Holy Spirit. The more he shares in this love, man rediscovers himself more and more fully in suffering: he rediscovers the "soul" which he thought he had "lost" because of suffering.

"Those who share in Christ's sufferings have before their eyes the Paschal Mystery of the cross and resurrection, in which Christ descends, in a first phase, to the ultimate limits of human weakness and impotence: indeed, He dies nailed to the cross. But if at the same time in this weakness there is accomplished His lifting up confirmed by the power of the resurrection, then this means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ's cross. In such a concept, to suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open to the working of the salvific powers of God, offered to humanity in Christ. In Him God has confirmed His desire to act especially through suffering, which is man's weakness and emptying of self, and He wishes to make His power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self. This also explains the exhortation in the first letter of Peter: "Yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God." (Pope John Paul II, "Salvifici Doloris," The Meaning of Suffering)

Fr. John Arintero remarks on the Cross, "What are these delights in which she appears so beautiful to the eyes of all and so pleasing to those of her sweet beloved? This is something the world cannot grasp or understand; it is understood only by those who have experienced it, for it is the true "hidden manna." The soul enamored of the Divine Lamb enjoys the greatest delights precisely where she encounters the purest suffering. The cross of Christ, considered scandalous by the Jews and foolish by the gentiles, this is the fountain of delights for the soul who has been enraptured in the mystical wine-cellars of the Spouse!

"It is there that she becomes modeled on the Crucified Christ and gathers the fruit of His victories. It is there that she prepares herself to enter into intimacy with Him, and merits sharing in His ineffable secrets, receiving with unspeakable pleasure the knowledge of His mysteries, thus enjoying the incomparable delights of His loving company and tasting the sweetness which He has reserved for those that fear Him. These sweetnesses enable her to follow Him to the very summit of His holy mountain and to share in His divine delights. (Fr. John Arintero)

THE CROSS
by Andrew Richards

Alone... alone with suffering and pain,
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
Why does this fever burn in my brain,
Ah! my pain now must infinite be.

Before I did bid you, "Come follow me!
To be my disciple, you must share in my cross,
When you suffer for love, you suffer with Me,
Who brings life out of death and resurrection from loss."

But now the blackness has drowned me in sorrow,
My light has turned to the misery of hell,
The pain in my flesh portends suffering tomorrows,
And the promise of joy I no longer foretell.

Oh Father!... your Will has dragged Me to hell,
Though not for the world do I bear this great loss,
But for those, in My Name, you have chosen so well,
Who called from this world, shall find life in My Cross.

For they are My friends, who my suffering do share,
Who are no longer alone in their misery and pain!
So Father, their spirits I commend to your care,
For through Crosses embraced, does your Love ever reign.

end

Pope John Paul II comments on "The Cross" as "Dark Night" in the doctrine of St John of the Cross:

“The Mystical Doctor appeals today to many believers and non-believers because he describes the dark night as an experience which is typically human and Christian. Our age has known times of anguish which have made us understand this expression better and which have furthermore given it a kind of collective character. Our age speaks of the silence or absence of God. It has known so many calamities, so much suffering inflicted by wars and by the destruction of so many innocent beings. The term dark night is now used of all of life and not just of a phase of the spiritual journey. The Saint's doctrine is now invoked in response to this unfathomable mystery of human suffering.

“I refer to this specific world of suffering about which I spoke in the Apostolic Exhortation Salvifici Doloris. Physical, moral and spiritual suffering, like sickness—like the plagues of hunger, like war, injustice, solitude, the lack of meaning in life, the very fragility of human existence, the sorrowful knowledge of sin, the seeming absence of God—are for the believer all purifying experiences which might be called night of faith.

“To this experience St. John of the Cross has given the symbolic and evocative name dark night, and he makes it refer explicitly to the light and obscurity of the mystery of faith. He does not try to give to the appaling problem of suffering an answer in the speculative order; but in the light of the Scripture and of experience he discovers and sifts out something of the marvelous transformation which God effects in the darkness, since "He knows how to draw good from evil so wisely and beautifully" (20). In the final analysis, we are faced with living the mystery of death and resurrection in Christ in all truth.

“Only Jesus Christ, the final Word of the Father, can disclose the mysterious meaning of suffering and, through His glorious Cross, light up the darkest night of the Christian. St. John of the Cross, consistent with what he teaches about Christ, tells us that after God revealed his Son He "was, as it were, mute, with no more to say" (22). The silence of God speaks its most eloquent and revealing word of love in Christ Crucified."(John Paul II, Masters in the Faith)