Passed On and Passing Through

Inevitably, we pass through life. It's the thing for which we were made: living, dying. Is that why it hurts so badly when life passes us- because it is counter our nature? Is that ubiquitous unspeakable anguish a celestial indicator of our own propensity to succeed?

The above statement may be quite plausible, but when we're seemingly found wanting in the pursuit of life, philosophy does little to console. So little, in fact, that I throw it out the window at times. It's rough to be passed over on a team, passed by on a race, or passed lost without love. It's grieving to pass empty, pass alone, and pass bereft of what we've sought.

There's the 'inspirational' factor behind this all: just take motivation from the experience, and work harder! What happens if, after 'working harder'--and not just harder, but longer, wiser, and better-- we're still passed? What if our knees are bloody from crawling the trail, our fingernails obliterated from incidental contact with rocks, and our eyes exhausted from peaking the horizon, and the good Samaritan turns out to be not-so-good anymore. What if we're left by the wayside, where we've been giving absolutely everything to 'work harder.'

It's always smart to consider the 'compassion' factor too: this experience is to help you have more compassion on the similar experiences of others. Well, how endearing that could be, but what if I'm struggling to keep my own head above water! What if 'compassion on others' is the thing furthest from my mind, and I'm just trying to make a solid walk down the street without tears plopping disrespectfully on my shirtfront?

It would be easy to continue in such a manner, pass along, if you will, in writing retrospective phrases of false endearment and misplaced hope. But the truth of the matter is that at times, we are passed. Life passes us, leaves us in the dust, and in a flash of sunlight, sears our eyes so we're blinded as we try to watch the beam regress from our view. Sometimes, we are passed.

Our pains may be assuaged in one simple fact, I guess. Nowadays, it seems the only power strong enough to nominalize my pain of being passed over to any noticeable or appreciable extent. Consider Doctrine and Covenants 122:58,

The Son of Man hath descended below them all; art thou greater than He?

The only way that life can pass us and we can still pass through life is via the Atonement, the sacrifice of Christ, and the plan of our Heavenly Father. It has become for me, the only way to make it. Ironic, adherence to God's redeeming plan really is the only way, truth and life (John 14:6).

If we want to consider a physical enactment of being 'passed over,' that annihilating pain of feeling complete nothingness, a walk through Hell comes to mind. It is Christ's walk from Gethsemane to Golgotha. If one were to pawn off the difficultly of such an act as minimal for a humanized God, consider that God's prophet, Isaiah, said Christ "poured out his soul unto death (Isaiah 53:12)." We know Isaiah never to use a finicky word, or misrepresents a statement. Isaiah did not say Christ poured out his soul nigh unto death. No, no, Christ literally poured out his soul unto death.

Does the following statement develop further insight into the intensity of pain?

...Jesus was enfeebled … by [hours] of violent … agitation, … by an evening of deep … emotion, … by the mental [anguish] of the garden, [and] by [the] three trials and three sentences of death before the Jews. … All [of] these, [added] to the [wounds] of the scourging [and loss of blood], had utterly broken … His physical strength. (Farrar, Life of Christ, p. 634-635)

The difficulty of the death walk having been made apparent, consider now the complete majesty of the situation. Christ picked up His cross. Christ carried His cross through a jaunting, jeering crowd who has once sat at His feet and hailed Him with palm leaves during His triumphal entry. Christ was, in effect walking a corridor of the utmost definition of being passed over. His march embodies the feelings to the most perfect extent of every disenfranchised and forgotten soul that has ever been passed over. But, Christ passed through. He passed across the threshold of complete submission, passed beyond the veil of debilitating mortality, and passed through life, despite having been passed over.

There have been many a man and woman who have passed through similar depths of personal emotional and physical pain. The beauty of the Atonement, over other individualized pains, is that the Atonement was ordained from before the physical foundation of the world, and was performed on behalf of humanity itself.

So, in effect, I'm learning how to deal with being passed. It is a necessary step to acquire the understanding of what Christ actually did by completing the Atonement. No matter what the reason is, being passed over is a part of passing through. Someday, I'll meet Christ in an eternal tryst of gratitude, fall at His pierced fall, and complete my mortal passing. I'll be embraced in the bosom of eternity, and begin the passage through that next realm.





(Night at Golgotha, Vasily Vereshchagin)

(William Bouguereau, The Three Marys at the Tomb, 1876)