Pick Up your Cross and Follow Me

Suffering like a Pro

Photo by Christoph Schmid on Unsplash

If there is one thing I’m not yet a pro at, it’s suffering. It is, I suppose, the reason why when we pick up our cross, we are not merely meant to hold onto it, to be crushed by it, and to experience its weight. While we do all of these things, we must also follow Jesus. That is to say we must carry our cross, interiorly, in imitation of Christ.

I was just speaking with a friend who has been deeply aware of many challenges that I’ve encountered in my life. She has a heart that seeks to advocate and confront the evils that lay such crosses on my shoulders. But she said something to me that I didn’t agree with, and yet I knew came from a place of love. She said, “Jesus only carried one cross, so it seems a bit wrong that you should carry so many.”

My immediate and spontaneous response was: “Jesus carried his Cross perfectly the first time. So he had no need to do it again and again.” If the goal of Christ’s sanctifying work is to enable ourselves to become like Him, it would seem appropriate that we rise to the challenge of not merely getting our cross to the finish line, but to do so with the same peace, joy, and love that Jesus had burning within His own heart. If we don’t do this perfectly, we still have room for improvement. We still have yet to become a pro.

I’m grateful to God for each cross He gives me, and I’m grateful for those friends who are able to empathize. I do believe there is wisdom implied in what she said, especially if it was to mean that one willingly takes on more than what God intends. This is prideful, and if not prideful, nonetheless still impossible and cruel. Yet, what I know about myself, and I’m sure you realize this about yourself too, is that until we can suffer like Jesus, we haven’t suffered sufficiently.

Do not get me wrong - I’m not espousing that our suffering is what will sufficiently atone for our sins. That is a rather tired mischaracterization from a spectrum of non-Catholic Christians. Nonetheless, while our own suffering is insufficient for our salvation, it still remains necessary inasmuch as it cooperates with grace. It is the very interior freedom to have the capacity to love as Christ does in the midst of suffering. If this is not our goal, I dare say that we do not love the interior life of Christ. For how can one love the interior life of Christ without wanting to imitate it?

The work of grace, in this regard, is often mediated through a process that unfolds in the sufferings we must endure. And Christ’s suffering will always be incredibly more significant than our own. Nonetheless, we must endure in the degree of perfection grace offers us and seek to expand ourselves as far as He wills us to imitate His crucifixion. This is only accomplished when we pick up our cross, while keeping our eyes fixed on the One who goes before us.

St. Thomas Aquinas said that if we wanted to become a saint, we should will it. He would also remind us that virtue means that we have learned to desire that which we will. So it is also important in our life to desire to suffer like Christ. This means we are not white knuckling through suffering, not merely enduring the external and interior turmoil, but somehow finding ourselves in a place of joy, peace, and love.

Joy, peace, and love, are often conflated with the passions. But the Church knows better. They are, as Aquinas would suggest, intellectual (spiritual) delights, not sensible (of the flesh) delights. To know and accomplish the Father’s will is Jesus’ bread, and ours too. To be at peace with carrying a Cross the Father willed for us is of itself its own reward. Why? Simply because we love the Father so much that to do His will is always our own pleasure. There is peace and joy, and love in this devotion and fidelity.

This teaches us something simple, but sometimes difficult to integrate. The key to suffering as Christ did is to have a good relationship with Him; with His Father. The very Spirit who cries from within “Abba Father,” wants and desires to do whatever the Father asks of us. This is the foundation to being able to love our enemies, to interiorly forgive others, to admit of our own faults, to submit ourselves to humiliation, and to in fact prefer it to honors and worldly glory. And what great strength we draw from the fact that we do this all in solidarity with Christ. A man who as God did not deserve such pain and suffering, but nonetheless obeyed in love. If He is to say “yes” than who are we to say “no” or even a type of “half-hearted yes?”

Pick up your cross and follow Jesus. You aren’t alone, but united to the Son who does this with you, for love of the Father. Let’s show the Father how much we love Him.