QUESTION: Fr. Paul Manuel
What the Crucified God says to me is that “these martyrs are the seeds of the resurrection of a new world. Like Archbishop Oscar Romero, they are the hope of the people: unforgettable, inextinguishable, irresistible.” wrote Juergen Moltmann. The crucified and the resurrected are something only Christianity speaks, what do they mean?
ANSWER: Jacob Parappally MSFS
The paradox of Christian message is that the Almighty God became human and died on a cross! It is the most incomprehensible revelation of God
in human history as it goes against any human reasoning and logic. Paul who had a deep knowledge of Hebrew theology and Greek philosophy, affirmed with deep faith and conviction that “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:22-24). It may appear to humans that it is an absolute foolishness to believe that God becomes human and dies on a cross. Certainly, it is beyond human reasoning to think that the Absolute becomes relative, the Infinite becomes finite and what transcends history becomes a part of space and time-bound history! However, the Cross of Jesus reveals God whose ways are beyond human reckoning! God who is comprehensible to human reason is not God at all!
Mystery of the Crucified God
A crucified God reveals not only who God is but also who humans are and what they can become! The Christian experience of God through Jesus Christ is that God becomes human in a world that opposes not only God but also those humans who live values of love, justice, equality, communion, reconciliation, peace etc. Why did God create a world that can oppose God and crucify any human who lives those values which make him or her authentically human even if this human is God himself? According to Irenaeus (d.201) one of the earliest Fathers of the Church, God did not create this world perfect but created for perfection. Humans are endowed with freedom to become perfect with the assistance of God and by exercising their freedom wisely. This gift of freedom is so inviolable that God himself had to come to their level by becoming human to assist them to become perfect without interfering with their freedom. Certainly, the abuse of freedom by humans from the very beginning of their conscious life affected the prospects of their becoming truly human terribly. They were on a path of self-destruction thwarting God’s plan for them. Therefore, humans needed both the reconciliation with God as well as the achieving of their perfection. The humanization of God or God becoming humans served both these purposes.
Though God would have become human to assist humans to become authentic humans in the way God intended for them, their abuse of freedom from the beginning of human history affected even God that God had to become human in a world that opposed God. The opposition to God reached its maximum possible when the world crucified God! Therefore, the suffering of God on the Cross did not begin on the first Good Friday according to Jon Sobrino, a liberation theologian. The suffering of God began at the moment God made the primordial option to be born in a world that opposed God! Therefore, Crucifixion is there from the beginning of creation and so too the sprouting of the seeds of resurrection!
Crucified God and Crucified People
The Cross of Jesus reveals God. The God revealed on the Cross of Christ is not the God of philosophers. The Cross of Jesus reveals a God who suffers because this God is absolute love! Love involves suffering. In his book, The Crucified God Juergen Moltmann states that if we say that God cannot suffer, we deny the basic Christian affirmation that God is love! Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who was killed by the Nazis just before the end of the second World-War, says that only a God who suffers can save us. Certainly, authentic love involves suffering. Love that does not cost anything to the one who loves is not love at all. It is God’s love for humans and their world that makes God suffer. Letting humans crucify God in God’s human existence is the expression of the depth of God’s love. However, one who is crucified also is the one who rises from the dead and makes everyone and everything participate in the resurrection! If crucifixion reveals a God who suffers because God is love, resurrection also reveals the power of God’s love! There is power in powerlessness!
Indeed, a victim nailed to a cross touches the abyss of helplessness and abandonment. “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me” (Mark 15:34) is the desperate cry of any human who suffers not only physical torture but also the mental torture of feeling abandoned to suffer alone. It is the cry of the one who always found meaning in life by surrendering oneself to God and trusted in the providence of God. God too suffers with humans who suffer especially the pain of God’s absence when God intensely present to them in ways unknown to them. In his human existence God also becomes a victim of human cruelty that is institutionalized by unjust systems of religion, society, culture, politics and economics. So too are humans victimized, tortured and crucified every day and every hour.
The victimization of humans happens all over the world. Those governments and political systems that do not tolerate dissent or opposition to their inhuman policies and ruthless implementation of their unjust laws and decrees victimize those oppose them and finally crucify them. Archbishop Romero was one among those murdered by a tyrannical regime. Abel in the Cain and Abel story of the book of Genesis stands as the symbol of all innocent and righteous humans who are tortured and killed for no fault of their own. The story of Abel’s murder is a reminder to all generations of humans that from the beginning of human history until today innocent men and women are tortured and killed by those individuals with inhuman and cruel attitude towards others or by those agents of certain perverted systems and ideologies which do not value the sacredness and worth of humans. But those thousands and thousands of innocent men and women murdered by ruthless men in order to secure power or to remain in power, did not die in vain. Their death brought life to those who were condemned live a wretched life as if they were dead. The non-violent resistance of individuals against tyrants and tyrannical forces, prophetic voices of men and women of character and integrity against oppressive and dehumanizing political and religious oppressions, peoples’ movements for securing human rights, the current struggles of the farmers in India against the newly introduced enslaving farm-laws etc., are signs of hope and symbols of resurrection. Crucifixion is not the end of the human story of God. It is also not the end of the divine story of humans!
Resurrection of Humans before Death
Juergen Moltmann’s insight into the mystery of Crucified God tells him that some martyrs are the seeds of the resurrection of a new world. He gives the example of Archbishop Oscar Romero (1917 – 1980) who was the Archbishop of San Salvador in the South American country of El Salvador. His commitment to side with the poor and the marginalized to secure their rights to live as dignified human beings, his condemnation of social injustice, assassinations and torture during the war between left-wing and right-wing forces of El Salvador enraged the right-wing military junta that he was assassinated on 24 March, 1980 while celebrating Mass. When his life was threatened Archbishop Romero declared his readiness to sacrifice his life for the poor who were victims of injustice and violence “for the redemption and resurrection” of El Salvador. When Pope Francis canonized him as a martyr of the Church on 14 October 2018, it was an affirmation of the Church’s commitment to the values for which Archbishop Oscar Romero lived and died. Archbishop Romero believed in the redemption and resurrection of the victims of injustice and oppression in his country through his own self-sacrifice. Death effects life. Resurrection lies in the womb of the just crucified! It is the divine logic of effecting God-intended transformation of humans and their society without in any interference in humans’ exercise of their God-given freedom.
The martyrs who lived and died for the cause of Jesus and his Kingdom inspire the resurrection of the dead spirits of the victims of oppression and dehumanization. Those men and women of faith who were murdered for standing for the values of the Kingdom continue to rise in the disadvantaged and marginalized people when they rise up against the evil forces of power which try to suppress and oppress them. The martyrs give irresistible hope to the victims of oppression to continue their struggle to regain their humanity in an inhuman situation deliberately created by unscrupulous men blinded by the lure of power and positions. The spirituality of the martyrs was not just the ritual worship of the Cross but following Jesus on the way of the Cross. To follow Jesus on the way of the Cross means to stand for the values of the Kingdom of love, justice, equality, fellowship, reconciliation, peace etc., and suffer the consequences, even death. They had to give up their lives for the sake of these values. Therefore, these martyrs give hope to the people who struggle to create a new world of justice, love and peace where humans can live as humans in communion with God, other humans and nature. They are indeed the seeds of resurrection of the living, and their Lord and Master, the Crucified One, is the source of resurrection of both the living and the dead. Indeed, life holds within itself both death and resurrection!
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