Lifegiving forbearance
What we experience involuntarily, Christ took on voluntarily
What follows is a continuation of a selection we posted in May 2025 from Chapter 2 of The Ethics of Beauty exploring St Maximos on the three crucifixions on Golgotha.
The book is written in the style of a conversation between an interviewer, Road to Emmaus (RTE), and myself.
RTE: What do you think became of the bad thief?
DR. PATITSAS: It’s a good question and one which seems to have concerned St. Maximos himself. Although at the beginning of Ambiguum 53 the saint seems to accept that the bad thief was lost, by the end of the discussion he proposes, rather, that the bad thief’s not having responded after the good thief’s rebuke is proof that he has humbly accepted the rebuke. His final silence is not defiance, but rather represents peaceful submission. He, too, is saved by the Theophany of Christ amidst trauma.
But St. Maximos also says that we could be condemned as the bad thief is usually thought to be, if in our suffering we cannot allow ourselves to see that the Word of righteousness is suffering, blamelessly, with us. This is a hard teaching, and for some of us it may not be resolved before the Last Judgment.
Saint Maximos, at any rate, is speaking somewhat metaphorically here. He is telling us that this third type of crucifixion is the one that we hope our own crucifixions will come to resemble; we will never equal Christ’s absolutely blameless suffering. But this is the question of healing for most of us who suffer trauma: how do we move from the isolating and killing crucifixion of trauma to a new possibility, which is the bearing of the aftereffects of trauma as a life-giving co-crucifixion with Christ? The good thief somehow beholds a theophany amidst his pain.
Might it not help us if we believed that the hell we are experiencing involuntarily, Christ himself took on voluntarily? He did it out of love, to save us from the hell we all have created for ourselves and for each other. We do believe that God is suffering with us in our trauma.
Shay found that the truth-first approach to trauma was not helping. Talk therapy easily increases our sense that the self is split, thus intensifying our sense of lost agency. Analysis reminds us that we are unable to control our own persons and our own identity. We start to feel as if we were brain-damaged—which as trauma sufferers we sort of are. We begin to think that if we could just go berserk then at least we would feel some temporary wholeness and integration. But we also know from past experience that the price to be paid for such public nakedness is high, that in fact the price increases with time, and that any relief is only temporary. There has to be another way out.
Seeing ourselves as suffering with Christ, seeing that He suffers with us, reverses all of this. It stops the panic and reintegrates the soul. In consenting to suffer with Christ as He consents to suffer with us, we overcome all possible attacks and find our integrity restored.
The Ethics of Beauty is available from St Nicholas Press.
Kali Anastasi!