Chapter 60: Priority of Suffering

To gaze upon an image of a man who was tortured and crucified is to be faced with the wretched darkness that resides in the soul of mankind.

How tiring life can be. How exhausting the toll taken from all the loss, pain, and suffering. Perhaps our anguish, the impossible loss, the tortured times we endure, spring from a misguided priority of suffering, one of the human-made kind.

We make our own strife and sorrow every time we project onto the sacrifices Christ made for us, the sacrifices we in turn must make for Him.

Suffering and sacrificing ourselves for Him is different than depending on Him...on His grace and on His abundant blessings and no other, including our seemingly undeniable self.

The complete surrender of Christ to His father's will is immortalized on the image on the Shroud. The mystery of total dependency on God is animated in this image that has no explanation.

It is ironic whenever we prioritize our worldly suffering as a way of maintaining ego control, rather than surrendering our independence to God and fine tuning our lives to His will. Our suffering is His entrance into us. Why shroud ourselves in the protective cocoon of the human ego?

In obeying ourselves as master, we inflict true pain and suffering on ourselves and those around us. Whereas, in depending solely on God, we enter into a place of obedience and sacrifice that, while it may require a lot from us, does not take its toll on us in the same exhausting, debilitating way. For we are fed from within the will of God, as opposed to any short term accomplishment or accolade we earn through egotism and self reliance.

That grace, that power is a gift we ourselves cannot initiate in and of ourselves. For to do so only leads to acts of kindness and charity that we tend to boast about and use as an excuse to reconcile our own inner demons. Our ego is clever enough to steal the spotlight.

Jesus was dependent only on the Father. Whatever pain, torture, suffering He endured, he was able to do so through total surrender and obedience to God's will.

Christ's total surrender results in an image so faint and yet so multi-dimensional and holographic in nature that it at once captures both the fragility and depth of all existence.

We depend on science to solve the mystery of the image. We put all our eggs in the basket of fact...proof..empirical review...evidence. Where is our dependence on God for explanation, meaning, mystery and marvel?

In depending on science for answers, we form hypothesis, theories, conduct experiments, and do a lot of arguing about who is right and wrong.

The swelling of our ego is the diminishing of holiness. God initiates the reflection of His glory in us, through us and all that surrounds us. But we ignore His surrounding glory because we think we understand it, deserve it, are it.

But what would it look like to depend only on God for solving the mystery of the image? What does it mean for us to wait, listen, surrender, and obey where this image is concerned?

It is much easier on us to entangle ourselves in the tangible theories we entertain than to hover in the faint, tenuous unknown that supports each particle, each fibril of what is beyond our limitations.

Are we being guided to the science or are we superimposing it? Do we glom on to certain theories only because they better encapsulate our views and beliefs, thus enabling us to exist in a context we find safe and comfortable?

The image on the Shroud beckons us to consider that salvation is initiated outside us and is realized in us only through Christ.

We are not in charge as to when, how or even if God will call us. Acts of grace are bestowed upon us and are not necessarily dependent upon our belief in Father, Son, or Holy Spirit.

Squared in by convictions and controversies, God invites us to both faith and skepticism. We all serve God, even when we are not trying to or are actively and adamantly denying Him. Perhaps this is why skeptics and believers alike continue to strive in vain to test and prove that the Shroud is not/is Christ's burial cloth. Perhaps believing and not believing are nothing more than independent reactions to the image.

The Shroud has called us all to pro and con. One cannot be without the other.

the gift of doubt balances the gift of faith
the gift of faith balances the gift of doubt

sin cannot be without salvation
salvation cannot be without sin

We can only perceive His glory if He lets us. The image on the Shroud is His tactical invitation. He initiates the conversation. The mystery of His entering into our lives is the mystery of the image. If we said yes to God, to depending solely on Him for guidance and answers, where might He lead us?

When you weigh the amount of energy in the world spent on the self, the ego, against the amount spent on God...imagine if all that energy went towards serving and praising God.

Do all our questions spring forth from God's eternal baptismal fountain? The beauty of our inquiries as to the origin of the image is that we can look at the totality of creation for answers.

Is the image:
A prayer?
A road map?
An answer?
A way in – to God's will rather than our own?
A way out of our own ego?
The cradle of Christ?
Our opportunity to walk with Him?
Surmountable suffering?
A passing Passion pain?
A testament to the power of surrendering our pain and existence to God?

What if the image only has mass as it is creating mass, thus rendering it a “living” entity?

What if it forms, solidifies, and then bursts open into new particles of mass?

What if, within that process of creation, its mass is undetectable?

Is this, perhaps, how the “God Particle” (Higgs boson) functions?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Many types of relationships have an understood reciprocity of love, yet how one sided we are with our love of self. The irony – we do not love ourselves enough to remedy our suffering.

Why is it so difficult for us to look at our own image and remind ourselves of the simple truth that belies each one of us:

it's not
all about me
in fact
it's not
about me at all