I. Introduction

After long years in the work camps of Siberia, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author who spent many years in the gulag of Siberia, fell into despair. Like other prisoners, he had worked in the fields day after day, in rain and sun, during summer and winter. His days were filled with backbreaking labor and slow starvation. On a particular day, the hopelessness of his situation became too much. He saw no reason to continue living, to continue fighting the system. He thought that the rest of his life was meaningless since he would most likely die in this Siberian prison. His life made no difference in the world. So he gave up.

Laying his shovel on the ground, he slowly walked to a crude work-site bench and sat down. He knew that at any moment a guard would order him to stand up, and when he failed to respond, the guard would beat him to death, probably with his own shovel. He had seen it happen to many other prisoners.

As he waited - head down, he felt a presence. Slowly, he lifted his eyes and saw a skinny, old prisoner squat down next to him. The man said nothing. Instead, he drew a stick through the ground at Solzhenitsyn’s feet, tracing the sign of the Cross. The man then got back up and returned to his work.

As Solzhenitsyn stared at the sign of the Cross traced in the hard dirt, his entire perspective changed. He knew that he was only one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. Yet in that moment, he knew that there was something greater than the evil that he saw in the prison, something greater than the Soviet Union. He knew that the hope of all humankind was represented in that simple Cross. And through the power of the Cross, anything was possible.

Solzhenitsyn slowly got up, picked up his shovel, and went back to work. Nothing outward had changed, but inside, he received hope.

Years later, Solzhenitsyn’s writings enlightened the entire world, telling us not only about the horrors of the Soviet prisons, but also witnessing to the power of God and the hope of the Cross. (The telling of this story is based on Fr. Luke Veronis’ story found on the website InCommunion.org)

What is this sign of the Cross for us?

II. Suffering and us

Over these weeks of Lent, we have been exploring this question. We have looked at many ways of thinking about the cross:

· first of all we looked at the metaphors of a ransom paid, an atonement given, a scapegoat who took on our sins, justification before the court of God, of a martyr who died for a good cause, of a hero who died being true to the life he lived facing corruption and wrongdoing in his society, – all approaches that see the cross as a means to make things right for humanity - for us;

· secondly, we explored the approach that sees the cross as God’s solidarity with all the suffering of the world, of human beings;

· last week, we looked at the cross as Jesus’ freely embraced experience of powerlessness. In this last way, the idea is that only through a deep sense of our own powerlessness as a human being are we able to be led into the profound sense of our oneness with the Divine. In Raymond Brown’s little book entitled A Crucified Christ in Holy Week, he writes that the only way to live fully is to accept our own powerlessness. (page 73).

In Paul Crowley’s book Unwanted Wisdom, he says that it is “only by diving into the reality of suffering and not evading it that one can find a pathway to hope and to the sacred.”

In exploring Karl Rahner’s approach to suffering, he (Crowley) says that it is “a command of Christian life to enter fully into our humanity”.

Only through our allowing suffering to touch us deeply (whether it be our own pain or the pain of others….) is it even possible for us to begin to know the depth of God.

If we resist facing suffering freely and fully or we avoid suffering in our deepest selves, probing the mystery of the Cross might lead us to believe that our sense of our own depth will be truncated. Jesus dying on the Cross is a sign that through deep human experience of powerlessness, one comes to fuller grasp of being loved.

The life of Francis of Assisi as told by Nikos Kazantzakis recounts Francis as confiding to Brother Leo that he is riddled with a fear of contact with lepers.

· He says: “Even when I am far away from them, just hearing the bells they wear to warn passers-by to keep their distance is enough to make me faint.”

· Leo says: “We could take another road….” Francis responds: “There will be lepers on every road we take. You will see, the streets will become filled with them. They will not disappear until we have fallen into their arms. So….put on a bold front – we are going forward.”

Suffering is not something any of us wants to embrace. If we want to grasp the mystery of the Cross which is so central to our faith, we, as Francis, need to move through our fear, our disdain, our desire to avoid and embrace that reality freely.

The Cross does not condone suffering nor does it encourage passivity in the face of unjust suffering. Those conclusions misinterpret the mystery of the Cross. Such conclusions are not uncommon but they are misleading.

Not one of these approaches is sufficient in itself and none of them are adequate if they center on the sinfulness of humanity. An image of the cross is only valid if it focuses on the mystery of love contained therein.

III. Conclusion – the Sign of the cross

In the most recent LCWR publication of Occasional Papers, an article by Luisa Saffroth Ph.D. speaks of the cross as a symbol which

· shows the vertical connection in which we ground ourselves in the earth and in a profound sense of partnering with God

· and the horizontal connectedness and relatedness with all of our brothers and sisters around (they intersect and give each other energy).

· The groundedness of both the vertical and the horizontal is in the earth of our own individual being.

· If both of these are in place, then, almost anything can happen and we are able to move through whatever it is we are facing and move forward.

The cross is a powerful symbol vertically rooted in the earth and reaching toward the Divine and horizontally extending itself in two directions simultaneously.

The cross is not an end in itself. Its mystery is an opportunity to deepen our own sense of God and our own sense of human life.

And so….we consciously sign ourselves

1 “In the name of the Father (the one who creates and gives life),
2 in the name of the Son (the one who shares our humanity and faces suffering freely), and
3 in the name of the Holy Spirit (the one who as love lives within us and who energizes the goodness in our world).

Sources for this reflection as the other Lenten reflections in this series include:

1. The Sign of the Cross, Recovering the Power of the Ancient Prayer by Bert Ghezzi,
2. Unwanted Wisdom, Suffering, the Cross, and Hope by Paul G. Crowley, S.J.,
3. A Crucified Christ in Holy Week, Essays on the Four Gospel Passion Narratives by
Raymond E. Brown,
4. Taking up the Cross, New Testament Interpretations through Latina and Feminist Eyes by Barbara E. Reid, O.P.

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