By Mark Kutolowski
As Christians worldwide commemorate the suffering and death of Jesus this week, we are simultaneously in a time of great uncertainty, upheaval and suffering with the global COVID-19 pandemic. As I mourn this tragedy unfolding, I also see an incredible parallel between the story of Jesus’s suffering and the spiritual situation we face in the midst of the pandemic. This Holy Week, I believe there is a profound spiritual opportunity available through reflecting on the pandemic in light of the passion of Christ. What do I mean by this?
The Challenge to the Ego:The prospect (or reality) of sickness and death, economic dislocation, and social isolation all disorient and disrupt our normal sense of identity and way of being in the world. The consequences of the pandemic and quarantine massively challenge the ordinary function of our egos. The late trappiest monk Thomas Keating identified three major instinctual ‘energy centers’ or ‘emotional programs for happiness’ around which egoic consciousness builds as we grow up. These are desires for 1) security and survival, 2) affection and esteem, and 3) power and control.[1]The COVID-19 crisis profoundly challenges all three of these centers. The prospect of death or financial destitution threatens our sense of security and survival. Isolation and social distancing take away our normal human relationships where we receive affection and esteem. The incredible uncertainty of our times—and our inability to control the outcome—erodes our sense of power and control. Both individually and as a collective, our egoic security is being shaken.
Without spiritual resources, these assaults on the egoic consciousness will be experienced as purely destructive. They can cripple our sense of well-being and ability to function in the world. In response to this trauma, the instinct of the egoic self is to contract further and to grasp ever more desperately for some symbol of security, affection, or power. In our secular world, there will be many for whom the suffering of this time is followed by greater fear, anxiety, and efforts to rebuild a sense of normalcy in the midst of increasing chaos. Without access to the spirit, we will at best emerge from the present distress bruised and battered, with a patched-up ego limping into the future. At worst, there is the very real risk of completely overwhelming the ego and coping mechanisms, with panic attacks (a temporary overload of the ego) or psychotic breakdown and mental illness (more permanent overload) as the result.
Conscious Suffering and the Way of Christ:There is another way, the way of conscious suffering that leads to spiritual liberation. When Jesus lived on earth, he consciously turned both towards God and towards the reality of the human condition. He was completely open to God in prayerful union. Simultaneously he was completely open to human pain and sorrow, healing the sick, and befriending outcasts. When he was persecuted, he allowed himself to suffer, taking on the human condition in its fullness[2]. Jesus’ life bears witness to a basic spiritual truth—the more open we are to God (the source of unconditional love), the more we are able to open to human suffering in ourselves and others[3]. Similarly, the more we open our hearts in love to suffering in ourselves and others, the closer we draw to God.
To suffer means ’to allow, to endure, or to bear.’[4]In the strict sense, our egoic selves do not ‘suffer’ in this way. The egoic self instead exerts tremendous effort to try to escape suffering at all costs—including inflicting pain on others, obscuring the truth, and lying to ourselves about the reality of a situation. When we are in the grips of our egoic reactions, we may feel great pain, but we are not ‘allowing’ or ‘enduring’ the situation at hand.
What happens when we engage in a practice of conscious suffering by turning towards our fear, pain, and uncertainty? We will feel great unease and discomfort as our egoic self flares up in high alert—we are doing the very thing it has labored so hard to protect us from! When we refuse to feed our programming and its desires for security/survival, affection/esteem and power/control, we will initially feel great resistance. My experience is that it is only possible to endure (or ‘suffer’) this resistance with faith in the presence of God. Sometimes this means a felt experience of God’s love. Often, it means simply holding fast to a conviction of God’s presence without any felt awareness, as the pain and anxiety swirls around in our consciousness. A spiritual discipline like Centering Prayer or the Welcoming Prayer is an invaluable aid in enduring the assaults of our emotional programming in a time of distress.
It’s difficult to take this path of conscious suffering, where we wait upon God in trust. Jesus, in opening to God and the depths of human suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, shared in this experience: “My soul is sorrowful even to death… Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will…My Father, if it is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done!”[5]The Gospel of Luke depicts Jesus’ labor in prayer as so great that ‘his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground.’[6]If it was difficult for Jesus, it will be difficult for us. The egoic self and its emotional programs are built around dissociation and hiding us from the real pain of our life and of the world. When we fully face life and reality, we will initially feel even greater pain than we had before. It feels like we are dying. In reality, it is only what is finite in us (egoic identity and our emotional programming) that is dying. There is a deeper, greater life—our spirit that is in union with God—that is waiting to emerge.
There is no denying the tremendous pain of choosing to suffer and to allow all things to be as they are. At times, we will feel overwhelmed, even abandoned. As Jesus was dying and was bearing all things on the cross, he cried out not only in a supreme act of faith—‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’[7]—but also spoke the words of utter abandonment—‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ This is where the utmost suffering led Jesus—both to perfect faith and complete anguish.
Resurrection and Union with God: Why face the pain in the world and in ourselves? Why would anyone choose to suffer and allow oneself to feel the pain? The end result of conscious suffering is not destruction, but liberation. Jesus’ final state was not death and abandonment, but resurrection into radiant union with God.[8]Similarly, when we choose to follow the way of Christ, our ultimate destination is the transformation of our hearts into conscious union with God. When we continue to turn to God and allow all things to be as they are—including our pain—the emotional programs for security/survival, affection/esteem, and power/control gradually diminish in their power over us. The programs are not who we are, though they are often who we mistakenly thinkwe are. When we cease to feed them with our conscious and unconscious attention, they wither. The very foundation for our egoic consciousness is undercut, and in its place, our spirit awakens. We begin to experience ourselves not as a finite ego, but as a bearer of spirit, at once inhabiting a human body and abiding in the infinite love and light of God. When we die to self, what rises within us is our eternal spirit. It is not afraid of death, because it never dies. When we become united to Christ in spirit, we are able to live and walk in unlimited freedom of heart. This unitive state can become the new ground of our identity, replacing the egoic self as the center of our conscious life.
In this way, we can experience the passion of Christ as an invitation to take up the spiritual journey from identification with the egoic self, through the diminishment of our emotional programming, to the rising of our spirit in conscious union with God. Instead of viewing the passion passively,[9]we can see it as an invitation to unite our own inner life with the journey Jesus took through suffering, death and resurrection. This participation in the paschal mystery is the ‘narrow gate and hard road’ that leads to life.[10]It is not an easy path, and it’s incredibly tempting to try and find an easier way. Everything in our egoic identity wants to find a way to survive, to live forever in our small and finite self. Yet the gospel promise is that it is precisely in dying to self that we enter into infinite, eternal life.
The Pandemic as Catalyst: From this perspective, we can perceive the spiritual potential of our present time in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. There is nothing inherently blessed about the pandemic. It is a great evil, causing death to thousands, sickness to millions, and disruption to billions of people. Yet this great upheaval can be the catalyst for the transformation of our hearts. If we take the pain and distress that arises as an opportunity to see the inherent fragility of our egoic identity and emotional programming, and then chose the path of trust and conscious suffering, this tragedy can become the source of immense spiritual growth. Just as the suffering and passion of Jesus Christ ended not in final destruction but in resurrection, the pain of our times can become a doorway to inner freedom and deeper life in God. In a time of physical and emotional upheaval, there is already a disruption to the ‘sleepwalking’ of ordinary egoic consciousness. Will we turn our efforts towards trying to rebuild a new place of ego-driven comfort and security, or will we use the interruption of our conditioning as a chance to turn towards freedom by taking up the way of Christ?
For the Good of the World:Nothing could be more important, from a spiritual perspective, than to use this crisis as an opportunity to take up the way of Christ and to enter into freedom in God. It is the fulfillment of our own spiritual destiny as children of God. It is also the way to be of maximum service to a world that needs our best. The more free we become in God, the more love and life energy we have available to be present to others in their need. Furthermore, as we are all interconnected in the world of spirit, each time one human being is more closely united to God, the entire human species benefits.[11]In a hidden way, the state of our hearts affects the whole of humanity, whether in the direction of wholeness or in the direction of fragmentation. To take up the way of Christ in this time is to offer our whole being, in love, for the good of all. It is, in short, to become like Christ.
Let us use this Holy Week, and this time of upheaval in the world, to enter into life.
[1]Fr. Keating also identifies a fourth ‘program’ that develops in later childhood – the taking on of group identity and merging with the unconscious values of one’s family and culture. This is not a new ‘center’, but an expansion of the other three centers to include group membership – so we unconsciously seek survival, esteem, and control for our group as well as for ourselves.
[2]See Isaiah 53:7: “He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
[3]To suffer with others is, of course, com-passion (‘suffering with’)
[4]From the Merriam-Webster dictionary, here is a description of the roots of the word ‘suffer’:…re-formation of Latin sufferre "to submit to, endure," from suf-, assimilated form of sub- + ferre "to carry, bear"
[5]Matthew 26:38-39,42
[6]Luke 22:44
[7]Luke 23:46
[8]We might say that in the crucifixion, all that was finite in Jesus died, and in resurrection, his life (and his humanity) was fully subsumed in the infinity of God.
[9]An example of a ‘passive theology’ is the concept of ‘substitutionary atonement’, which emphasizes that Jesus died for us to appease an angry God and to take God’s punishment in our place. In this theology, Jesus suffers so that we don’t have to. Believing in this theology, in addition to distorting our image of God, can discourage following the way of Christ into our own journey of inner transformation.
[10]Matthew 7:13-14
[11]I am reminded of the saying of the 19thcentury Russian saint, Seraphim of Sarov, “Acquire peace within your hearts, and a thousand around you will be saved.”