Queries for the Man on the Cross

by EMMANUEL R. FERNANDEZ

We often think of “God’s will” as something which He wants us to do, something which He wants us to accomplish. But, sometimes, “God’s will” comes in the form of something we can’t do anything about, something we simply have to endure – in patience, and in faith.

In some sense, the “will of God” which comes in the form of having to do or to accomplish something is “easier” on our shoulders because it still gives us a room for choice. Somehow, we still have the freedom to decide whether to say yes or to say no, to accomplish “God’s will” or to reject it. A young woman who feels that God is calling her to the religious life can still say no. And God will respect her choice. He will not suddenly send a thunderbolt from the sky in order to strike her dead on account of her rejection. The same could be said of a man who feels that God wants him to resign from his toxic but high-paying job and find work that will allow him to have more time for his family. That man still has the latitude to say yes or to say no. In both examples, their choices will eventually have consequences. But these are consequences, NOT punishments from God. The things God wants us to do or to accomplish always redound, in the end, to our own good. If we choose not to do them, then we deprive ourselves of the good that would have been ours if we only said yes. That’s a consequence we must be ready for as a result of our own choices.

But the “will of God” that comes in the form of something to be endured is different. We can’t say no to it. We just have to carry it like a cross thrust upon our helpless shoulders.

All of us have had to endure that kind of “God’s will” at one point or another in our lives: a freak motorcycle accident that kills a young son who held so much promise; a serious sickness that has paralysed us or left us with only a few months more to live; a child who continues to rebel against us even if we cannot think of a reason why there should be so much hatred in his or her heart for us; a huge earthquake that claims the lives of thousands of people, including one or two who had been a part of our personal journey; a war that continues to destroy the lives of helpless civilians, including those of innocent children; a pandemic that has turned our world upside down…

Of course, we ought to desist from ascribing all things such as these to “God’s will” every time. If you’ve never really taken good care of your health and you have been smoking a pack of cigarettes a day for the last twenty years, the doctor’s pronouncement that you have lung cancer and that you only have a few months to live is not “God’s will.” If you’ve been warned against taking a boat ride on a particular day because there’s a huge storm coming, but you still insist on taking that ride, then you can’t ascribe to “God’s will” the accident that may befall you as a result.

But there are tragedies that strike us for which we never had any responsibility; there are trials that violently shake the ground of our lives towards the occurrence of which we never really contributed anything. And, in the face of such trials and tragedies, we cannot help repeating the same old question that has been asked by countless others over the centuries: How can an all-good, all-loving and all-powerful God allow evil things to happen in our lives? How can such an all-good and all-powerful God afford to see us undergo so much pain and endure so much suffering yet still claim that He loves us?

There is a field of philosophy called “theodicy” that has been trying to answer that question for a long, long time. But the philosophical explanations that theodicy has so far come up with can satisfy our hunger for answers only up to a certain point. At the end of the day, after all of theodicy’s stratospheric attempts to pacify our minds, we will all find ourselves asking the same question we began with.

And it’s the same question that must have been on the minds of everyone who witnessed our Lord’s crucifixion: if this man hanging on the cross is indeed “God’s Son” as he claims to be, why doesn’t God do anything to save him? If he is indeed “God’s Son,” why does God His Father allow him to suffer and die in such a brutal, humiliating way? And if he is “God’s Son,” why can’t he himself do something about his own suffering? Matthew’s gospel narrates that those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, “You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.” (Mt 27: 39)

Well, Jesus did not come down from the cross. And neither did His Father do anything to save him from his human suffering. From one point of view, it may look as though God did not answer the queries they asked – the queries that WE, all of us, continue to ask to this day.

But, maybe it only looks that way because we have mistaken His “silence” for a lack of an answer. Maybe the answer was right there, in the very silence of God, in the very “powerlessness” of both the Father and His dying Son. Jesus Christ did not come to take away our suffering and our pain. He came to endure them himself. And by enduring them, he demonstrated that pain and suffering (which will always be a fixture of our human condition) are part of a Mystery we cannot fully understand but which we can all choose to embrace, to be fully a part of – in faith: a Mystery the ultimate unravelling of which commences with the joy and glory of Easter.

*Copyright © 2023 Emmanuel R. Fernandez