The other day at our weekly family dinner, my youngest brother, Joshua, gestured to my crucifix and remarked, “Don’t you think that’s odd? You remember your God by wearing a symbol of His brutal murder.” It called to mind a similar observation made in a skit by comedian Bill Hicks, who wondered if Christ had been executed in the 20th century, would Christians be wearing little electric chair pendants?

It’s a valid question. After all, the apparent absurdity of the crucifix was recognized even by St. Paul, who observed in 1 Corinthians 1:23 that the crucifixion of Christ was, “to the Jews, a stumbling block, and to the Greeks, folly.” In other words, the idea of a suffering and dying God-Savior seems silly to both the theologically- and worldly-minded among us. The idea that God would choose to redeem humanity by having Himself brutally tortured and murdered strikes one as patently absurd. After all, God didn’t have to bring about our salvation in such a manner. He’s God. He can do whatever He wants. He could have just “snapped His fingers” as it were and brought about the salvation of humanity. So why the contradiction of the Cross? Or, more specifically and to the point of the question, why do I wear a crucifix?

After all, many Christians prefer to wear a simple cross. The lack of a corpus calls to mind the Resurrection. Christ didn’t stay on that cross, He brought His victory over death to a climax by rising from the dead! Glory to God! This is a much more comforting thought, and the appeal of such symbolism is obvious. It is, of course, always important to view the Crucifixion in view of the Resurrection, but we can’t let the light of Easter blind us to what the darkness of Good Friday can teach us about God. Understanding the suffering of God, the Passion of Christ, is crucial (literally). Suffering is a central mystery not only in Christianity, but in the experience of every human being. We all suffer, and many of us have wondered how God could allow such pain and sorrow to persist. Add on top of that that God not only allows it, but was Himself subjected to it, and the popular question emerges: “Then why call Him God?”

I would answer that, it is precisely in God’s suffering that we can all find meaning in our own suffering. We find this by looking again to the writings of Saint Paul, this time the book of Colossians, chapter 1 verse 24: “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.”

What, rejoicing in suffering? And wait… making up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions? What could possibly be lacking in Christ’s suffering? His Passion was perfect, and infinitely meritorious. What sort of heresy is this idea of Christ’s lacking in affliction? The answer is found in the next few words: “… for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” It’s not the sufferings of Christ in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, of the Word made flesh, that are lacking – but the sufferings of Christ in His mystical body, the Church.

In order to understand why the Church needs to suffer, we need to return to the question, “Why the Cross?” Why not just write a check? God doesn’t need to do anything to be able to pay off our debt of sin. He already has everything. He has all power and glory, all riches and honor. He could have just simply forgiven us, right? Just wrote a check, just snapped His fingers. Why did He have to go and get Himself murdered?

These sorts of questions reveal two primary misconceptions which need to be corrected before we can understand the answers: 1) that salvation is primarily a legal transaction, and 2) that the crucifixion was primarily an execution. But this isn’t the case, although obviously salvation has a legal component, and the crucifixion was, in part, an execution. The truth is that salvation is primarily a transformative process, and the crucifixion was primarily a sacrifice.

According to Scripture, we, as Christians, “are being transformed into the same image [of Christ] from one degree of glory to another,” (2 Cor. 3:18) so that we, “may become participants of the divine nature.“ (2 Peter 1:4) We also know that Christ said that, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.” (John 10:18) Christ freely offered Himself up to suffer as a sacrifice. Christ’s self-gift didn’t begin on Good Friday, but on Holy Thursday during the Last Supper, when He told His disciples, “This is my body, which will be given up for you…” And indeed, long before then, since before the foundations of the world. Self-gift is an integral part of the inner life of the Trinity. The Father has enterally been giving of Himself to the Son, Who has eternally returned that gift by giving Himself to the Father – and the Holy Spirit is the manifestation of Their mutual Love. That is the “divine nature” of which we are being transformed into participants: Love. God is an eternal exchange of Love, and this radical self-giving of the Trinity is precisely what we see embodied in the crucifixion – and is, furthermore, the Love in which we are being invited to participate. On the Cross, Christ was manifesting that which He’d already been doing since before the foundations of the universe.

This is why suffering is such a crucial aspect of our transformation of salvation, precisely because suffering is inseparable from love. Just ask any parent or spouse. Their love requires suffering, a suffering they bear gladly for the sake of their beloved. Similarly, we as Christians are asked to “take up our cross” and follow Christ, bearing our sufferings out of love for Him and for others, for “greater love has no man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:13) We can lay down our lives every day for our brothers and sisters, by embracing our sufferings so that we can make up what is lacking in the sufferings of the Church. For, just as our prayers are efficacious when they’re joined with and to the prayers of the one intercessor between God and man, Christ Jesus, so too can our sufferings, when joined with His own, participate in the redemption of others.

Our sufferings allow us to be conformed more closely into the image of Christ our Savior, and enable us, as the mystical body of Christ, to participate in His redemptive ministry in much the same way as we do with our prayers. And this is why I wear a crucifix, because of what Christ’s crucifixion revels to us about God, about ourselves, about our relationship with God and with others, and about our mission as Christians and the meaning of our suffering.