The Transformation of Suffering
Reflections on September 11
& the Wedding Feast at Cana in Galilee

A Christian Perspective on September 11, 2001

The Oneness of the Human Family

    The oneness of the human family that is presupposed in Christ's passion, death, and resurrection deserves more elaboration. There are three stages in Christ's passion in which he identifies with the human condition at its deep level of individual and social weakness and alienation.

    The first stage is when Christ was asked by God the Father in his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane to take into his own consciousness the psychological and spiritual consequences of our feelings of alienation--from other people, from God, or from ourselves. This suffering can be so overwhelming that it leads to mental and physical illness.

    Jesus did not die for a few misdemeanors. He experienced the psychological consequences of our going against our conscience in major decisions in our lives: such feelings as an inner sense of alienation, loneliness, desolation, and utter powerlessness. These are the kinds of suffering that people experience in the Night of the Spirit as part of the unfolding of the spiritual journey But they are also the pain and horror that constitute the state of separation from God caused by sin. And this is precisely what Paul refers to when he writes, "For our sakes God made sin of him who knew no sin, so that in him we might become God's holiness" (II Corinthians 5:21).

    We hear the desperate plea of Jesus during his agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me" (Mark 14:36). Jesus felt the fullness of human destitution and spiritual poverty in that cup. To drink that cup was to taste the desolation that the greatest of sinners and violators of human rights have ever felt. In other words, to be a sinner in that sense is to be the opposite of God, or to feel abandoned by God even rejected by God. It is those precise feelings that were present in that cup. Therefore, Jesus' cry to let the cup pass from him really means, "I can't drink it. I'm dying from this unbearable anguish. Father, if it be possible, take it away" This is the cry of human weakness reaching to infinity. It expresses Jesus' complete identification with the burdened conscience of every person who has ever lived or will ever live.

    The response of Jesus to his agony is contained in the second part of his prayer: "Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done!" (Mark 14:36). This is the cry of divine love reaching to infinity. "Yes," the cry was saying, "I will take into myself the suffering of every individual together with the collective suffering of all humanity."

    As Christians, we believe that in baptism we are incorporated into the mystical body of Christ, and become cells in his glorified body (I Corinthians 12:12 27).The same Spirit and dispositions that are in Christ are present in us, inspiring us with the same willingness to open ourselves to everybody's sufferings, insofar as we are capable of bearing them. Moreover, we are not just individuals. We are individual and social in our very being. We cannot be individuals without being totally united with everybody else, and we cannot be united with everybody else without being an individual member of the mystical body of Christ.

    Biology teaches that each cell works for the good of the whole organism, independently of its own good. It follows the instructions of the DNA encoded within every one of our cells. In a similar way, we might say that the Spirit of Christ has been poured into us. The divine DNA bestows on each of us the whole program for human transformation. The ultimate Christian project is to enable the unfolding of the divine DNA into the fullness of transformation in Christ. And this unfolding is not just for us. The project to which God has invited us in the gospel is not only the transformation of the individual, but a participation in and contribution to the transformation of the whole of humanity.

    Jesus' saying, "What you did to the least of these little ones, you did to me" (Matthew 25:40) implies that he is present in everyone else. Similarly, this acknowledgment could only happen if there is at the deepest level of human nature a oneness that underlies every one of us as individuals and in some degree penetrates our consciousness. More and more, as we mature as human beings and in the deep knowledge of God, we are being brought into the divine presence. According to Saint John of the Cross, our overall degree of wellness as a person depends on our conscious relationship with God.¹ To whatever degree grace has not been fully realized in us, we suffer some degree of illness.

    The second moment of Christ's descent into the human condition is on the cross, where he says, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46).The word Jesus normally uses for God the Father is "Abba," which in Aramaic was an endearing and intimate word that can be translated roughly as "Daddy" This text suggests that on the cross Christ's psychological sense of his identity as the Son of God was obscured. And in a sense it would have to be. If he was to become sin, he would have to feel the full weight of total separation from the God who up to that moment had been everything to him. In this sense, Christ let go of his identity as the Son of God in order to identify with every human being--past, present, and to come--all of whom are in need of redemption and destined for divine transformation.

    The third and final moment, one that is highlighted in the Eastern Orthodox liturgy of Holy Saturday, is the teaching that Jesus descended into hell after his death. There are several different opinions as to what this descent could really mean. In any case, in the Apostles' Creed it is stated: "He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell." In some way, God dies in the death of Jesus. The descent of Jesus into hell is the sign that God joins us in every kind of suffering, even in the suffering that is the natural consequence of personal sin.

    Perhaps we might affirm that it is not so much personal sin that hurts God, but the pain that we feel as the consequence of our sins. When we accept that pain, God comes to heal us and to unite us to himself--a place at the very depths of our suffering. In his descent into hell Jesus has taken the whole of human moral evil into himself in order to plunge it into the abyss of God's infinite mercy and thus to take it away.

More information can be obtained by reading the book The Transformation of Suffering by Fr. Thomas Keating.  It is offered in our Book Store.