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39 : the view from the cross

Christ of St. John of the Cross – Salvador Dali [1951]
Christ of St. John of the Cross – Salvador Dali [1951]

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 

— Matthew 27:46



We often speak of the crucifixion through the reassuring lens of what came next — resurrection, redemption, victory over death. But what if we pause before the dawn breaks? What if we dwell in the crucible itself — not as spectators, but from Christ’s own point of view, as Dalí dares to do? Hovering above the world, body broken, vision blurred with pain and sweat, there is only the vast ache of offering. No reward yet. No light. Only the void.


This is the liminal agony — a space of no return, and no clarity. A space Jung would call the nigredo, the blackening stage of inner alchemy, where the ego is annihilated so that something truer may emerge. It is the psychological and spiritual moment where meaning has not yet reassembled. Where all prior certainties have dissolved, and nothing new has taken form.


In this moment, we cannot rush forward to the resurrection. We must honour what it means to be in the dark, not knowing. Not even the Divine escapes this. Christ’s cry from the cross — "Why have you forsaken me?" — is not failure, but the most human utterance of all: the cry of abandonment, the ache of carrying a burden without the comfort of outcome.


And yet, in this unbearable stillness lies something extraordinary. Not the glory of rising — but the absolute integrity of presence. Christ does not turn away. He stays. He stays in the moment of not knowing. And in doing so, he models for us the ultimate spiritual maturity: the willingness to give everything without promise of reward. To be love, even when love seems absent.


Dalí’s vision — suspended over water, far from the earthy anguish of most crucifixion scenes — invites us to contemplate the cross not as spectacle, but as interior terrain. What does it mean to be in a moment of surrender, of total exposure, and still choose to stay with it?


This is the teaching: we must learn to sit in the moment before rebirth.

Before we are sure.

Before the story ends well.


Because this is where transformation is seeded — not in resolution, but in profound, honest surrender.



Journaling Prompt: Can you recall a time in your life when you were suspended in not-knowing — before clarity, before healing? How did you survive it? What did it require of you? How might you now learn to honour those moments of spiritual unknowing without rushing to closure?



ps: are you ready to end tomorrow these 40 days of Lent?!



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