“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
– Anthem by Leonard Cohen
Spirituality teaches us that we do not handle suffering, but lets suffering handle us in profound and enigmatic ways that become the very source of life. Our pains are God’s hiding place and bear our greatest gifts. It becomes very clear then that a severely wounded man became the central life-changing symbol of Christianity.
Our salvation is in fixing our eyes on the wounded one, and from there learning to love our own woundedness and everyone else’s (John 19:37). Our wounds are the only way for us to get out of ourselves and for grace to get in. They are the only things humbling enough to break our attachment to our false self and make us yearn for our True Self.
If we do not transform our pain, we will continue to transmit our pain to others through anger, blame, projection, hatred, or scapegoating. Let us then, as followers of Jesus, pray for the grace to do what he did: hold the pain until it transforms us into the “Risen Christ.”
1 Corinthians 15:54-57 “Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
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