Follow Jesus Christ

The death of loved ones can change a person. For example, the death of someone close from illness led the world-famous singer George Michael to give generously to hospitals and to people in need. Spoiled by fame, wealthy and once frivolous, he came, after his personal tragedy, to understand other people’s pain with his whole heart and soul. Often, to build something new you must tear down something old and clear the space for a new structure. Without such tragedies people often do not grow or improve. We can blame God for all our misfortunes, but on the scale of eternity — where everyone is alive and earthly life is like a fleeting theatrical play — all this makes sense on the path of perfecting mind and heart.

The death of Jesus became an incredibly significant moment in the apostles’ lives. From a psychological point of view it was a powerful trauma that unfolded through a whole spectrum of stages — from the initial numbness to deep inner restructuring. The disciples experienced the collapse of their world, a loss of meaning, and the loss of the sense of security and protector they had felt with the Teacher. Their old identity as disciples in the time of a living Jesus could no longer exist: the previous picture of themselves, of their mission, of the future, was destroyed. They felt abandoned, bewildered, and internally emptied. Many shut down, isolated themselves, and lost the capacity for active engagement. Peter suffered a painful rupture with himself because of his denial; Thomas fell into strong skepticism and a need for tangible proof; John and Mary Magdalene experienced deep emotional grief, close to the loss of a family member. Each of them faced an identity crisis in which the old way of being had died and the new had not yet been born.

The Gospels show that the disciples’ encounters with the risen Christ, as they experienced them, removed many of these symptoms and gradually restored their psyches. Fear gave way to confidence, disappointment to renewed meaning, inner fragmentation to wholeness. Numbness yielded to action, isolation to openness, and the sense of emptiness to inspiration. They came to feel that death had not destroyed the core of what they had gained beside Jesus; on the contrary, it opened access to a new, more mature understanding of his teaching. Their emotional trauma became a point of inner growth. Sometimes the loss of an old identity is the door through which a person enters a new life. That is exactly what happened to the disciples.

Jesus repeatedly warned the apostles about his death, speaking of it both plainly and in symbols. He openly declared that the Son of Man would be betrayed, killed, and rise on the third day. Those prophecies sounded unbearably heavy, and the disciples often avoided understanding them. But there were also allegorical images — of the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep, of the grain that must die to bear fruit. These metaphors at first seemed to them only spiritual pictures, but later took on literal and profound meaning.

Why did he speak of his death in advance? From a psychological perspective such warnings were of great importance. Jesus sought to soften the inevitable blow so the event would not break them utterly. He helped them gradually confront the idea of loss so their minds could at least partially prepare. He was creating an internal framework to prevent them from falling into despair when the tragedy became reality. He was, in effect, planting supports in the disciples’ neural systems in advance so that after the shock they would have the possibility of finding meaning and acting. He taught them not to confuse a temporary catastrophe with a final defeat. His words were meant to be a seed of hope that would sprout at the moment when everything seems lost.

Turning our gaze from the gospel narratives to our own lives, we should be as ready for traumas and shocks, tragedies and suffering as we are for joyful and tranquil times. Any loss can become a moment of personal crisis, but also a moment of growth. Sometimes the darkest days become the turning point after which a person begins to live more consciously, more honestly, and with greater inner depth. Sometimes what looks like an end is also a beginning — as with the apostles, who, having passed through Jesus’ death, found a new identity, far more mature, strong, and free. If you ask yourself whether you are saved, such transformations in the process of growth are themselves evidence that salvation is taking place. The salvation of the soul is a process of its continual perfecting.