The best way to begin to experience the transcendent dimension of Christ is by studying his life and teaching as recorded in the Gospels. The scriptures, especially Christ's own words, are written out of a very deep level of consciousness. They are efficacious on whatever level they are received, but obviously our penetration of the meaning of the words will depend on our present level of consciousness. That is why the same text of scripture keeps striking the eager reader as constantly new. It is always opening up new levels of meaning, not because the words are changing, but because we are changing as our faith deepens and we are better prepared to listen.

In the Gospel Jesus kept urging his listeners to be alert: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Matt. 11:15). This is an invitation to deepen our capacity to hear him. As our capacity for listening grows, so does our understanding of his message. Our relationship to Christ, to our neighbor, and to ourselves all begin to take on a different perspective. Every new level of faith transforms our world, because it gives us a whole new view of reality. As our level of consciousness becomes more spiritual, the whole of creation takes on new meaning. It is no longer so opaque, so contradictory; no longer a world of opposites. Because of our new perspective, we perceive that many seeming contradictions are really complementary at a higher level of consciousness. As we move up the ladder of faith, our philosophical questions tend to recede. As trust in God becomes greater, fewer questions arise.

The love which the Father has for Christ is offered to each of us all the time. It does not bring the perfect fulfillment which is to be found in heaven, but it is an anticipation of that joy. "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden," Jesus said, "and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28). The word "rest" has a precise tradition in Christian spirituality. The early contemplative monks of the Egyptian deserts understood this term to mean something much more than sitting under a heavenly palm tree. Rather, they were thinking of the "rest" that comes from wanting what God wants and not being compulsively forced to do their own will, because their own will, along with everything else in their ego, had been sacrificed to God. Sacrifice is absolutely essential for human growth; yet the abiding disposition of sacrifice is rarely established without some experience of suffering. Of course suffering itself does not make one holy and can even lead to despair. Despair is suffering that fails to teach.

A clear distinction must be made between sacrifice and suffering. Suffering is the conscious experience of pain. Sacrifice can also involve conscious pain, but it is primarily an attitude. The attitude of sacrifice can transform suffering into joy. We bring many needless sufferings on ourselves, and these God does not will. But to suffer as a member of a fallen race and to endure the consequences of the human condition is what the Son of God himself did. This form of suffering may be an important part of our purification. God may also send suffering to people who are already thoroughly purified as a counterweight to the effects of moral evil in the world. This is called vicarious suffering. Most of the great religions of the world recognize this mystery.

The mystery of vicarious suffering is most clearly revealed in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. There innocence itself was destroyed in order to redeem the human family. If God's only-begotten Son can suffer and die, the suffering and death of the innocent take on a wholly new dimension. It likewise can be seen as redemptive. Faith alone can perceive God triumphing in the midst of human suffering and bringing about the reign of divine love.

"God is love" (I John 4:16). When divine love overflows from the interior life of the Trinity into our hearts, it immediately confronts our false selves, and we experience conflict. A struggle arises between this pure goodness--sheer giving--and the ingrained possessiveness, aggressiveness, and self-seeking which are so characteristic of us in our present condition. Thus, at the very heart of life is the challenge of sacrifice; of dying to our present condition in order to move to a higher level of life. This can only happen by letting go of the false self.

Suffering and death are not enemies, but doors leading to new levels of knowledge and of love. Unless we are willing to sacrifice what we have now, we cannot grow. We grow by dying and rising again; by dying to where we are now and being reborn at a new level.

Paul tells us to look to Christ "who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame" (Heb. 12:2). This is an important insight in trying to understand suffering. What is normally experienced as painful at one level of our evolving consciousness is not necessarily experienced as painful when we move to a higher level on the ladder of consciousness. It is obvious among the saints of all religions that, although they led in credibly difficult and arduous lives, they experienced joy in those very hardships. Hardship itself seems to have become joy. The same kind of life would have meant intolerable suffering for the average person.

Thus, we have to understand first of all what is meant by suffering, and then relate it to the person who is undergoing it before making a judgment. It is misleading to think that all aches and pains are going to disappear as one climbs the ladder of consciousness. On the other hand, one's attitude toward suffering is going to change. It may change to such a degree that the experience itself becomes a joy; not for its own sake, but because it is perceived to be a participation in the mystery of Christ's passion--a way of sacrificing oneself in order to express, to the utmost degree, one's dedication to God. As one comes to know God more intimately, the heart expands, and the desire for union with him tends to put all obstacles and hardships into the shade; to make them seem, while nonetheless real, not worth thinking about.

Through the revelation of the Trinity, we have come to realize that the inner nature of infinite being is the mystery of a love that is totally self-giving. The English word "love" does not bring out the nuances of the Greek term used in the New Testament texts, which is usually translated "charity" and which means a totally self-giving love--a love that is self-less.

Divine love is not a feeling of benevolence. It is not a feeling at all. It is total self-giving. There is no self-interest in the Trinity. Each person of the Trinity dwells in the others, and everything that they have is shared in common. The only distinction is the way in which each shares the infinite treasure of the Godhead. The Father shares it to give it, the Son to receive it, and the Holy Spirit to rejoice in it as the gift of the Father and the Son. When divine love invades the world of broken people, a world in which there is suffering and limitation, it is certain to be rejected. It is precisely by being rejected, and yet still remaining steadfast in boundless compassion, that its divine character is ultimately proved. Moreover, divine love triumphs over every obstacle, including suffering and death. This is why the passion of Jesus is the most magnificent and comprehensive revelation of divine love that exists. It reveals the ultimate meaning of reality, which is sacrifice. In a world of imperfection, divine love is proved by sacrifice.

Jesus faced a great dilemma in sacrificing himself for the redemption of the human family. As Son of God, he was one with the Father and knew the beauty and goodness of God and the ugliness and hatefulness of sin as no other human being could ever perceive them. Yet, in the Garden of Gethsemane he was called upon by his Father, as Paul says, "to be sin" (II Cor. 5:21); that is, to take upon himself the actual experience of the sinner, with the sinner's feelings of guilt and self-rejection, and, what is worst of all, his sense of alienation from God.

This was the incredible double-bind that Jesus had to struggle with in his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Father, how can I, your Son, become sin?" In Jesus, at that moment, the ultimate opposites met. No opposites could ever be further apart than these. He knew it was the Father's will that he accept the terrible anguish of the experience of alienation from Him. For Jesus, this was excruciating in the extreme, for he knew the Father as no one else could ever know him. His response was total self-surrender to the Father: "Not my will, but thine be done" (Luke 22:42). But it caused him to sweat blood.

The attainment to the heights of the spiritual life does not take away all suffering. It may, but it may not. Christ did not suffer because of the kind of upside-down human nature with which most of us have to struggle. He was suffering because it was the will of the Father that he take upon himself the sins of the world in order to free us from their consequences. It was by identifying himself with our state of sinfulness with all its consequences that he utterly destroyed it. Thus, at the moment of death he triumphed over sin. At that moment, as John says so significantly, "He handed over the spirit" (John 19:50).

The Spirit was received by the disciples as tongues of fire on the day of Pentecost. The new power which overwhelmed them was based on an invincible confidence in Jesus, emerging from their newly awakened awareness of sonship and intimacy with the Father. Salvation is fundamentally the realization of oneness with God. When we work to surrender our own desires, world view, self-image, and all that goes to make up the false self, we are truly participating in Christ's emptying of himself as Paul described it. We are emptying ourselves of the false self so that our true self, which is the Christ-life in us, may express itself in and through our human faculties. And we can do this because he handed over his human life to the Father, and at the same time he handed over the Divine Spirit to the human family.

Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Matt. 16:24). What is this "self"? It is our thoughts, feelings, self-image, and world view. Jesus added, "Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake, will find it" (Matt. 16:25). That is, he will find eternal life, the Christ-life, welling up within.

Faith is not just the acceptance of abstract propositions about God; it is the total surrender of ourselves to God. In baptism, our false self is put to death and the victory won by Christ is placed at our disposal. The dynamic set off in baptism is meant to increase continuously during the course of our chronological lives and lead to the experience of the risen life of Christ within us. In the Christian view, death is thus an integral part of living. Dying to the false self is the movement from a lower form of life to a higher one; from a lower state of consciousness to a higher state of consciousness; from a weak faith to a faith that is strong, penetrating, and unifying.

Participation in the life of Christ means coming to know and love the person of Jesus. The humanity of Christ is our starting point and the door into his divinity. Jesus said, "I am the door of the sheepfold. If anyone enters by me, he shall go in and out and find pasture" (John 10:7-9). We enter through the knowledge and love of Christ's humanity into the sheepfold of his divinity, where he invites us to rest in oneness of spirit. The new person that comes to birth in that deep interior rest manifests Christ in the place and time in which he or she lives.

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Excerpted from The Heart of the World by Fr. Thomas Keating

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