The philosopher and survivor of the Auschwitz death camp, Elie Wiesel, wrote a book entitled Night.  In the text he recounts the story of how the SS hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the whole camp. The men died quickly, but the death throes of the youth lasted for half an hour. ‘Where is God? Where is he?’ someone asked behind me. As the youth still hung in torment in the noose after a long time, I heard the man call again, ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice in myself answer: ‘Where is he? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows.”

On Monday, September 14, we celebrate the Exaltation of the Precious and Life-Giving Cross.  From that Cross we hear the Lord’s seven final words, among which is, “O God my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” It is Christ’s prayer of abandonment. It reveals the heaviness of His heart and the finality of the dasterdly deed that silenced, we thought forever, the voice of the gentle and meek Rabbi from Nazareth. Yet it is there.  It boggles our minds, it strains credulity.  Christ abandoned?  Christ left to the baser and dark instincts of the human heart?  Christ left alone in the hour of His greatest need? Yes….this is Jesus abandoned. Moreover, most shockingly of all, this is God Himself who and, as Creator and Lord, freely surrenders Himself to the warped angels of our nature, only in the end to triumph.  At the center of this spiritual, salvific drama is the Cross.

The theologian Jurgen Moltmann in his book The Crucified God, clearly outlines the truth of this Divine Abandonment: “There is no Resurrection without the crucifixion of Jesus, and so the revelation of Jesus Christ as the son of God in power is only possible through the abandonment of Jesus Christ on the Cross. And in order to fully understand the abandonment of Jesus, we must understand Jesus as the Crucified God.” What does this mean?  How can it be that within the very nature of God Himself, is the Father who sacrifices everything for His Son, who submits to a violent descent – one far more jolting than His descent in the Incarnation?  God is not more God than in this abandonment! He is not more powerful than on the Cross’ experience of powerlessness.    The Cappadocian Fathers (St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory Nazianzus) were convinced in faith that even if man hadn’t sinned, still God would have come as human, as vulnerable, as “open to the scourge conceived for Him since the foundation of the earth.” This is who God is. This is what the Cross is. We recall  the words of the theologian Hans Ur Von Balthasar: “It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.” No path of redemption can make a detour around it!

What does this Crucified God mean for us? It means that this is not a step back. The theology and spirituality of the Cross is none other than the reverse side of the Christian theology of hope, if the starting point of the latter lies in the Resurrection of the crucified Christ. He unites the salvific act by the silence that stands between the Cross and the empty tomb. The crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ are one unified event, despite the span of time between these two historic occurrences — they are one indivisible event: “the Resurrection of the crucified Christ” It is the suffering One who rises, the abandoned One whose heart takes refuge in a Father’s love, the dead One who becomes life itself! The discouragement of the Cross gives way to the bright promise of a Kingdom that will never end and a love that we can never imagine – or lose..

This means that God reaches out to us through that bloody wood. He penetrates all our sorrows, anxieties, pains and suffering to suffer with us.  He is the new Job!  Our holy father St. Theodore, Abbot of the Great Studium, reminds us: “In the cross there is no mingling of good and evil, as in the tree of paradise: It is wholly beautiful to behold and good to taste. The fruit of this tree is not death but life, not darkness but light. This tree does not cast us out of paradise, but opens the way for our return.”

The Cross is the ultimate sign that God is with us in our suffering. He does not look down on our struggles in some dispassionate way. He is NOT that God who, as the poet Browning wrote was “in His heavens, all’s right with the world.”  The Cross is not the sign that God withdraws from us, but that He coes even nearer – right into our pain. He looks at us in love from the center of the struggle, the  middle of the whirlwind, the heart of the storm.  What we proclaim about our God at the Nativity, we cry out now in hope: “God is with us!”  God is in solidarity with us. The Cross is not an ornament for our walls. It cries out to us – “Remember, I am here. I am in your pain. I know what it is to hurt – to hurt until you breathe your last!”

Archpriest and theologian Thomas Hopko, of blessed memory, wrote: “The Resurrection must then be understood not as a mere return to life as such, but as a conquest of the deadliness of death—as a conquest of god-forsakenness, as a conquest of judgment and of the curse, as a beginning of the fulfilment of the promised life, and thus as a conquest of all that is dead in death, as a negation of the negative, as a negation of the negation of God.”  The Cross is but a signposts to Lord’s Resurrection from the tomb.  The Cross cancels out the finality of pain and death and thus relieves each of us of the finality of suffering, sickness, and fear.

We share a global human suffering at the present time.  It is not from God but from the randomness of nature, bound up in the original rejection of Love in Paradise. Nonetheless we are anxious, confused, worrisome, and maybe living at the edge of tears.  Perhaps we are silently, timidly  echoing the words of that man in the concentration camp: “Where is God?” He has entered our pain.  The Cross is the answer!  He is here with us. He suffers with us. The shadows of the Cross will be transformed into a light that is brilliant. Hope will see a rebirth!  The outstretched arms of Christ remind us that “I have loved you THIS much!”  Believe it…..trust it………know that it is God who speaks and His word is true.

We adore Thee O Christ and we bless Thee, for by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed our world and, miracle of miracles, redeemed us as well!  To the Holy Cross we bring honor and worship this day. We venerate it in our homes and in our hearts – not as some religious article or trinket, but as the very gateway to the love of God, the heart of God, the God who fell in love with us and will love us evermore!

Faithfully yours in Christ’s Cross,

Fr. Dimitrios