The Paradox of the Cross

            THE PARADOX OF THE CROSS

                                                                                              “…by his wounds we are healed….”

                                                                                                                  -Isaiah 53:5 (NRSV)

In the fall of 2015, I was suffering from what my doctor called “agitated depression.” Still able to do errands, I dropped into my parish office to leave something with the secretary. I did so, but as I was walking back to my wife in our car, my pastor came running out of his office, and seeing how upset I was said to me, “You are part of the suffering of Jesus.”

At that time, my pastor’s reassurance could not register with me because of my illness which eventually hospitalized me. I did recover.

What is the truth my pastor was trying to tell me?  I now realize it is the paradox of the Cross, the divine reversal: life, present and eternal, obtained through Jesus’ death. I had to find out more of this Sacred Truth.

First, what is a paradox? A paradox in language is an apparent contradiction which is somehow true. As Laurence Perrine writes in Sound and Sense, An Introduction to Poetry, “When Alexander Pope wrote that a literary critic of his time would ‘damn with faint praise,’ he was using a verbal paradox, for how can a man damn by praising” (p.90).

A paradox may also be a situation, like the Cross. But because the Cross is also divine, we turn to God’s word for the Holy Spirit’s illumination.

God speaks to us through paradox, especially at key moments like the Crucifixion. The passage most directly linked to the paradox of the Cross appears in the Old Testament: a Suffering Servant passage (Isaiah 52.13-53.12). This inspiring verse proclaimed on Good Friday reads like a vision of Christ’s crucifixion; Isaiah places the Servant in a paradox pointing to Jesus’ suffering, death and resurrection: “Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases, yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed” (53: 5).

The worldly might ask how can anyone be healed by being bruised? “Impossible!” they would say. But for our salvation this dualism must be read with faith in the context of Jeus’ Suffering, Death, and Resurrection. The Father turns the life and death dualism upside down-the paradox. Thus, this Suffering Servant passage becomes a forerunner of what theologians now call the Paschal Mystery.

In this final Servant passage, we also detect a hint of Resurrection: God speaks through the prophet: “Out of his [the Suffering Servant] anguish he shall see light; he shall find satisfaction through his knowledge. The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities ( Is. 53:11). To see the Light in the New Testament is to encounter the Risen Lord.

But the most profound insight into the paradox of the Cross appears in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, “…[The] Jews demand signs and the Greeks desire wisdom.”  Paul answers, “… but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:22-24). The Cross then is no ordinary contradiction that is somehow true, but a divine paradox.

What then can we conclude from the above discussion? First, the Cross is integral to the Paschal Mystery: the Cross through the Father’s will could only lead to Jesus’ Resurrection. Second, Jesus’ Suffering, Death, and Resurrection recorded by the gospel writers, is divine in origin and nature. The foregoing is why today’s suffering, violence, and death have meaning only through the lens of the Cross; it is a source of grace and healing for us.

We are back then to my pastor saying to me “You are part of the suffering of Christ.”  This statement does not negate personal suffering or treatment. We affirm that the crucified Jesus, the Mighty Healer, is with us no matter the challenge. He heals that we may be whole, and thus holy. This Is the grace that flows from the paradox of the cross: through Christ’s wounds we are healed.

                                          Bernard J.Callaghan

                                        bandscall@eastlink.ca