The Alchemy of the Cross

“Why must we suffer? Because here below, pure Love cannot exist without suffering”. - St. Bernadette Soubirous

“The highest degree of a medicine is Love.” - Paraclesus

“By nothing else except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ has death been brought low: The sin of our first parent destroyed, hell plundered, resurrection bestowed, the power given us to despise the things of this world, even death itself, the road back to the former blessedness made smooth, the gates of paradise opened, our nature seated at the right hand of God and we made children and heirs of God.” - St. John Damascene

It is Holy Saturday. We are in the midst of the Easter Triduum, a time in which the world’s Christians remember and memorialize the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To outsiders, this remembrance may seem morbid and strange. Why remember the torture and gruesome death of anyone with such intensity? Why contemplate such terrible, unjust suffering?

And yet, suffering is the one avoidable fact of human existence. The Buddha even enshrined the reality of suffering as one of his four noble truths. He was not alone. Nearly all the world’s religions grapple in various ways with the fundamental questions: What do we do with evil and suffering? How do we make sense of it? How do we overcome it?

Of all the questions that humans have pondered, this is arguably the most difficult. For we want to believe in the goodness of reality. We have a fundamental intuition that life is a gift and the world is good; that the basis of reality is benevolent. Indeed, all the great mystics of every religion, those who have had direct experience of the divine, confirm that God is love, is bliss, is unending joy.

But despite this conviction, sooner or later, we are all faced with the bitter gall of evil and pain. Our primordial innocence is lost. From seeming random events like a home consumed by a wildfire, to acts of great violence and treachery perpetrated with intentional malice, we are confronted with a world filled with immense suffering.

Worse still, if we are honest, we find shadows and darkness within our own hearts. Evil is not just out there in the world. It is within us, though we go to great lengths to deny it or repress it. All too often, our railing agains the evil outside of us is but an attempt to avoid the darkness, the reservoirs of hatred, pain, or shame, within ourselves.

The event of Golgotha is the confrontation of Divine Love with the unutterable pain of a fallen creation. It is ultimate love facing ultimate evil and transforming it from within.

The Alchemy of the Cross

The cross represents the ultimate alchemical transformation. On the cross, the greatest evil becomes the greatest good. The leaden weight of malice, trauma, and betrayal—that which is base—is transformed into the golden philosopher’s stone of divine and eternal life.

But this alchemy is not possible without confronting both fear and suffering. The message of the cross is that the shadow, the darkness, can never be bypassed. It must be faced in all its horror and ugliness, felt, and the cup fully consumed. Only then can it be transformed into something higher, something redemptive. Only then can something evil become something good.

My clinical psychotherapy practice, as well as my own inner work, has taught me that the source of nearly every neurosis or disorder in the human heart and mind is fear of suffering. We will go to great lengths to avoid feeling pain, physical or emotional. We will erect protective defenses of great complexity in order not to suffer. The power of our addictions, too, is rooted in a desire to drowning feeling in momentary pleasure.

Nevertheless, the truth remains that no one has ever healed by bypassing, distracting, or numbing. All too often, the very defenses we erected against suffering bring about the very anguish we fear. Even nurturing positive emotional states or practicing affirmations in an attempt to drown out the shadow is not enough. Spiritual bypassing, no matter how pious or well intentioned, has never lead to true transformation of the soul.

A Furnace of Love

No, we cannot bypass the shadow. We must face it if we are to truly heal. I frequently remind my clients that feeling is healing. While pain must be titrated and experienced in a safe and controlled way—we certainly do not want to re-traumatize anyone—the truth is, pain that is not felt and witnessed compassionately is never truly resolved.

The image of the Sacred Heart reveals a heart at once on fire with love and yet pierced with suffering. It is a heart both vulnerable and strong—a heart truly courageous that does not shrink back from the shadow. It is in this alchemical furnace of the heart that pain is transformed into bliss. Here, love and grief commingle to become a vessel of healing, a chalice of life giving love.

On Golgotha, Christ faced and felt the shadow of the entire human collective, past, present, and future. He did not shrink back, but drank the karmic cup to the last drop. We too, must face the darkness in our own hearts with courage and equanimity. The way to healing is feeling. The way to light is through the darkness. Faced with courage, our shadows hold the secret to the transformation we seek. Do not lose heart, for great light and joy unspeakable will be your reward.