Second Conference

The Cross – and sweetness = hope (perseverance)

Exodus, 15:22-25 – Numbers, 21:4-9

My dear brothers and sisters,

If this were a longer retreat, we would have been able to follow up our talk of this morning with a talk based upon the circumstances that attended the Israelites Crossing of the Red Sea (in recent translations, the Sea of Reeds) as a way of remembering and better understanding the change that takes place in the soul when a person is baptized. Baptism transforms us from children of wrath to adopted children of God and brothers and sisters of Jesus, co-heirs with Him of His Father’s Kingdom. Because of Baptism, this world is transformed into a desert for us; it becomes inhospitable to the life of the spirit. The circumstances of the Cloud which was “dark, but which gave light to the night” is susceptible to interpretation in terms of Faith; that Faith which keeps us from falling back into the state of being children of wrath as that cloud hid the Israelites from the forces of Pharaoh, who had pursued them, and kept them from falling back into his clutches. Thus a catechesis on Baptism and all its marvelous effects, as well as an opportunity to review the teaching of Our Holy Father on the subject of Faith would have fitted in very well with the theme of this retreat: Journey of Faith in the light of the journey of the Israelites in the desert.

But I am going to skip over that event in the spiritual journey and speak about the two events spoken of in the readings. There can be no doubt that both of these are foreshadowing of the Cross of Jesus, that is the Wood of His Cross – or simply, His Cross, and also, Jesus hanging crucified upon His Cross. This conference will consider the role of Jesus’ Cross, Jesus Crucified in our spiritual journey.

I am quite sure that each and every one of you can grasp that role from the reading itself. That special wood, when thrown into the bitter waters, made them sweet. Without the Cross of Jesus to sweeten our sufferings, we would never be able to persevere in our definitive conversion to Christ. We would not even be able to persevere as Christians.

It will not do us any harm to consider the sufferings of Jesus. To do so makes it quite clear that there is absolutely no kind of human suffering, physical, mental, or spiritual that He has not experienced, and that to a degree that must certainly surpass what human beings are obliged to suffer. It is the remembrance of His sufferings that corresponds to the kind we may happen to be undergoing that sweetens – makes palatable – that suffering, even while it may not even lessen it in any way.

The first kind of suffering Jesus experienced was physical suffering. We may distinguish exterior suffering, inflicted from without upon the surface of the body, and suffering that proceeds from an internal cause.

The greatest of Jesus’ exterior physical sufferings would have been the scourging. We are told that the Roman scourgings were so severe that often they, alone, were able to cause death. In effect, Jesus was skinned alive, or flayed, by the scourging. All the nerves of His body (most of His body) were exposed to the air, so the mere contact of those nerves with the air was enough to cause intensive pain. We know, too, that while His upper torso was one bleeding wound, His clothes were put on Him, which absorbed the Precious Blood and caused it to dry. Then when His garments were cruelly stripped away on Calvary, all the pain of the scourging was renewed.

But of course, that was not all. After the scourging, He was crowned with thorns which alone must have been torture, but it was intensified by the soldier’s striking Him about the head and face with a rod they had placed in His hands as a scepter, while they mocked Him, saying to Him “Hail, king of the Jews”. The face of Jesus from the shroud of Turin indicates that the cartilage of Jesus’ nose had been broken, and this, too, must have happened during that buffeting and been grievously painful.

We still have to mention the crucifixion itself, preceded by the severe abrasions inflicted upon His shoulders by the wood of the cross, the pain inflicted upon His knees as He fell upon the path either paved in stone or strewn upon it once outside the city. We can only image how grievous was the pain of having blunt spikes hammered through His wrists and feet. We might well compare it to undergoing surgery without the benefit of anesthesia. And finally, the exquisite torture inflicted upon His body, His back already an open wound, by the rough, abrasive vertical bar of the cross. Truly, His exterior physical sufferings were horrendous, and we can always find in them a source of comfort and strength when we ourselves are stretched to the limit of our endurance by our physical exterior suffering.

Next we must consider His interior, physical sufferings. In us these would be those that proceed from some internal condition, say cancer, ulcers, kidney stones or migraine headaches. The interior suffering of Jesus was most likely that of having His arms stretched so far beyond normal limits as to cause disjointing of bones and rupturing of tendons. It is a kind of pain we cannot properly imagine. Surely, it must have at least equaled all other possible interior pain that human beings have suffered in the course of centuries. But the physical suffering of Jesus certainly cannot compare with His mental and emotional suffering. It seems He experienced every possible variety that can exist. The one we are most familiar with is that which He endured in the garden of Gethsemane. It was so great that it caused Him to sweat blood. Saints and mystics have told us that it was the agony of foreseeing that His sacrifice was going to be in vain for so many souls, among them would be souls upon whom He would have already lavished choice graces and who would have professed love for Him. He probably suffered more from those betrayals of His love than anything else, more than for those who would reject His love and His graces out of coldness and indifference, more than those who would hate Him and treat Him with contempt. He may well have been tempted to ask for a mitigation of that anguish, namely, to have to suffer only for those who ultimately would be saved, and not for those who ultimately would deliberately reject Him and be lost. But He was willing to drink the entire cup His Father offered. He would suffer in full measure for everyone who is born into the world, whether they were to be saved or not.

There might well have been another kind of suffering Jesus endured in the garden, and the reason I say this is because I believe there is no human suffering the likes of which He had not experienced during His Passion. We probably all experienced to a slight degree the pain of unrequited love. Love that was unselfish and pure. But there is another mental suffering we all must experience at one time or another, and that is to do or say something that someone we love, though happenstance, interprets as a deliberate wrong directed against herself/himself, the circumstances being such that it is impossible to try to prove otherwise without making matters worse. That is a real torture to a loving heart. So I do think that by some miracle, Jesus’ humanity was allowed to feel convinced that His Father really thought Him to be guilty of all the sins of mankind; to feel that the Father thought and believed that Jesus deliberately had offended Him. Certainly this could well have caused Jesus greater mental suffering than the suffering caused by knowing His redemptive death would be in vain for so many.

Still, there were other sufferings of mind and heart in store for Jesus. There was the suffering caused by the flight of the Apostles at the time of His arrest, and the suffering caused by the betrayal of Judas. Also the unjust condemnation by the Sanhedrin, and the denial three times by Peter, who had vehemently protested that he would die for Jesus. There was the suffering caused by the clamor of the crowd for His death by crucifixion, the suffering caused by the unjust abdication of responsibility by Pilate, who preferred to see Jesus cruelly maltreated and put to death rather than to lose favor with Caesar, the suffering of seeing Pilate prefer that a vicious murderer be set free rather than Jesus Himself, the author of life. There were the jeers and jibes, insults and cruel mockery by the crowds on the way to Calvary and during the three hours of His agony.

What a suffering it must have been for Him to be held captive, robbed of His freedom, His hands and feet nailed immobile, utterly helpless. But could this helplessness have been as great as the frustration, the utter helplessness His human heart would experience with hardened hearts, hearts that could reject all His loving advances and graces that would draw souls to Himself? Certainly we all have known that kind of helplessness and frustration, and certainly ours could never have matched that of Jesus.

Again there was the suffering Jesus experienced when He saw His Mother at the foot of His Cross, suffering in her heart pangs that were almost the equivalent of His own. Surely the thought entered His mind that He Himself was the cause of His Mother’s suffering in virtue of having chosen to obey His Father’s will which exacted the full measure of suffering from them both. He must have suffered thinking that He was leaving His Mother behind, whom He so desperately wanted to be with in order to comfort and console her.

There must have been other mental and emotional suffering which Jesus endured that we are not aware of, since the more loving and sensitive and compassionate a person is, the more surely he or she will suffer in heart and mind. Callous hearts never seem to suffer in that way. Whose heart could be more loving and sensitive and compassionate than His? We surely should be able to find sweetness as well as consolation and strength in the midst of our own sufferings of this kind when we remember that Jesus endured His own for love of us, and was “glad” in the depths of His being that He had the opportunity, as man, to show His love for us in this way.

Finally, we should say something about His “spiritual suffering”. I call it that for lack of a better name. St. Teresa of Avila, in her book of Mansions speaks of a difference between soul and spirit, which she perceived, but was not able to explain. That, as you must have guessed was Jesus’ sense and conviction of being abandoned by His Father. It must have been a suffering somewhat like the suffering of souls in hell, which St. Thomas Aquinas, following earlier doctors of the church, I’m sure, called the “pain of loss”. Even though the words spoken by Jesus on the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” are the first line of one of the Psalms, which Jesus must have been praying to gain strength for His humanity at that moment, we must believe that He really felt that abandonment most keenly, because after all, everything in Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms spoke of Him and of how it behooved the Christ to suffer and so enter into His glory, as He Himself said to the two disciples He joined on the way to Emmaus after His Resurrection. In a sense, we will never have to feel totally abandoned by God anymore (I speak of those whom the Lord is leading along the road to holiness which is the path He Himself in His Humanity trod, although He was already Holiness) because we can join ourselves to Him in His abandonment and find solace and sweetness in His company, unless, of course, God allows us to forget that he and His cross are there for us, which may very well happen to chosen souls, victim souls.

One other kind of suffering we human beings endure (those, that is, who have made a definitive conversion and are sincerely trying to serve God in holiness and uprightness of heart) is to ask the question “Why me?” when suffering of any kind afflicts us. This, of course, flows from the false notion that holiness of life is a protection against the evils that afflict us in the world. After all, Jesus Himself did say, seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all else will be given you besides. Thus a person who has been leading a very good Christian life might be tempted to say: “God is not fair”. Then it is that the Cross of Jesus comes to our aid. If there was anyone in this world who least deserved to suffer, it was Jesus Himself. In one sense He suffered because He was a true man living in our fallen world, among sinful men. That aspect of His suffering He endured in common with each and every one of us, and usually God does not ask any more of us than to accept those inevitable sufferings without complaint and with gratitude to His merciful providence. But God actually deliberately delivered Jesus into the hands of those who hated Him most, so when it seems that He is doing the same to any devout and holy soul, that should be the cause of greater and deeper spiritual joy, because He is identifying that person with Jesus, His Most beloved Son. (Now read Numbers 21:4-9)

This passage also refers to Jesus Crucified: the Cross, because Jesus Himself referred to it on the occasion He was speaking to Nicodemus at night, “and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the Desert, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that those who believe in Him may not perish, but may have everlasting life”. (John 3:14,15).

The reason for the punishment was the fact that the people’s patience was worn out by the journey. Other translations say they were wearied by the journey. It seems, because of the serpents sent to bite them and cause them illness leading to death, that this tells us clearly that impatience and weariness can lead to sin. What also arises is dissatisfaction with the deferral of complete freedom, not only sin and suffering, but also from denial of the “flesh”, which has been kept in check for so long and is craving its share of the satisfactions that are granted to the higher faculties through Faith, Hope and Charity. That dissatisfaction can also lead to sin. The sins, represented by the bites of the serpents, would in the very least, be grumbling and dissatisfaction directed against God, but could also include seeking unlawful compensations to alleviate the weariness and the dryness suffered in one’s lower nature.

The cross of Christ, or more specifically, the crucified Jesus, is therefore the remedy against weariness and impatience. The sight of Jesus hanging on the cross is, therefore, or can be, a source of perseverance, and a means of nourishing Hope. But of course, first of all, Jesus crucified is the cause of the remission of all sins, it is the power behind the Sacramental Absolution we receive in confession. This passage seems to suggest that it is only devotion to Christ Crucified that is able to protect us from becoming so wearied with the constant, day after day fidelity in living up to our definitive conversion, that we turn to creatures for comfort and relief. It is only the sight of Jesus Crucified that fosters and sustains the virtue of perseverance within us, which of course also fosters and sustains in us the Theological virtue of Hope. Hope is what enables us to rely on God’s promises and His Mercy and Providence as we await the day when we share in the Resurrection of Jesus. In a sense, Jesus crucified is a symbol of the Church militant, awaiting the day and the hour when it will be transformed into the Heavenly Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb, because it recalls Jesus Passion and death, which He had to undergo in order to attain His glorious Resurrection and Glorification in Body and Soul at the right hand of His Father. We know very well what power lies in devotion to Jesus Crucified – our own St. Therese prayed for the conversion of Pranzini, the condemned murderer as her first “child” in the spiritual order. She asked for a sign and it was given. Pranzini kissed the cross held out to him, and we know without a doubt that he was saved. The Canonization of St. Therese gives us that certainty. So if one act of kissing the crucifix could save him, the grace to do so having won for him by Therese, imagine what a lifelong devotion to the Crucified Jesus can do for someone who has made a definitive conversion, not only for self, but for the whole church.

<<<Journey index

>>>next conference

MISSION STATEMENT: This web site was created for the purpose of completing the work of Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, O.C.D These conferences may be reproduced for private use only. Publication of this material is forbidden without permission of the Father Provincial for the Discalced Carmelites, Holy Hill, 1525 Carmel Rd., Hubertus, WI 53033-9770.