The Crucifix of Fatima
Gingerly I sat down on the pew. With head bowed low, I contemplated what had brought me here. Though darkness is the light’s absence, it feels heavy to the one forced to carry it, like an unrequested cross biting into their back. My battle with depression in the years leading up to this moment felt like calvary for me. It forced upon me a passion only God could relieve. Yet all my prayers felt like caged birds calling for the sky. Who would open the door that lets my words fly free?
With this question in mind, I came to Fatima, Portugal in February 2022. I was used to being a traveler, but I had no idea how to be a pilgrim. I’m Protestant, after all. But I’m also charismatic, and our tradition will chase down revival. When news of the Spirit’s work reaches us, we’ll often pack up and go to the place where revival was struck. Or we’ll visit places that hosted outpourings in the past.
In 2004, for example, my youth group visited Brownsville Assembly of God in Pensacola, Florida for a conference that continued the legacy of the 1995 Brownsville Revival. I wouldn’t have labeled myself a pilgrim, but the trip was a pilgrimage, nonetheless. Anytime one leaves the place they call home to meet God at work somewhere else, they are a pilgrim.
My pilgrimage to Fatima was different than my past Pentecostal journeys; it happened almost by accident. A few friends and I were in Portugal on vacation. While planning the trip, Fatima drifted into my mind. I was eager to be rid of depression, and I had heard people sometimes find healing at the holy site. So I decided to go.
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I had no expectations for Fatima. I’m not Catholic, and I wasn’t even sure I believed the stories of three shepherd children having visions of the Virgin Mary. But I went anyway.
As I walked into the plaza, I first came to the Paul VI Pastoral Center, a church at the south end of the site. Though the sanctuary seemed like it could fit thousands, I was the only soul inside the building then. Like a swimmer checking the water temperature before diving in the pool, I lowered my head and prayed that God would meet me that day, that my prayers would burn bright before his throne. “Let me see your face,” I prayed. After years of the darkness incarcerating my mind, I needed a fresh vision of the Lord.
Once these words passed from my mind, I looked up to scan the sanctuary. It was austere compared to the grandiose cathedrals I was used to in Europe. But instead of grimacing at the architecture, the first thing I saw was the enormous crucifix rising behind the altar. And, because of where I was sitting in relation to the art piece, the eyes of the one on the cross were looking right at me.
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I don’t know what to do with the crucifix. On the one hand, I value the reminder of what Christ suffered for me. But on the other hand, it offends to think of him always nailed to the cross. Was he not raised from the grave? Wouldn’t we do better to contemplate him in his glory seated at God’s right hand? As Hebrews 4:14 says, “we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God.”
Whatever I think of the crucifix, I can rarely look away. I find myself contemplating the man fixed on the boards. The physical pain he suffered was a mere summary of the mental anguish he experienced. As he struggled for breath (crucifixion victims generally die of asphyxiation), Jesus cried out the words of Psalm 22:1: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
In this cry of dereliction, I see someone who understands me. How many times did I beg God to take away the depression? “My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:2). In Christ’s crucifixion I’m reminded of one who felt just as alone as I did. But as soon as you find someone who can say, “me too,” to your suffering, you’re no longer truly alone.
As I sat near that crucifix in Fatima, I prayed that God would show me his face. When I looked up, I saw him looking back. Jesus’ crucifixion has power because it ended with the resurrection, not death. My depression found meaning because it didn’t end in isolation; it ended with me held secure in the gaze of God.
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The Crucifix
In a church
empty like my presumptions
and spacious like my
heart’s cavern hollowed by
doubts,
I sat on a
hard wooden pew,
stubborn as the beam
bearing my weighty
load.
I looked up
at the church’s altar,
laying out my
pain like hardened
bread,
overbaked and burned
by years of grilling
an unhearing heaven,
silently hoping for someone
to break this skeptic’s
loaf.
Still I ask.
Were my questions
a ladder, they would
aim for heaven
with height belittling
Babel,
yet the rungs
would stop short of
God’s throne, for I
lacked the brave
faith ready to
leap.
Then I dared look
up, and a crucifix
looked back with eyes
like islands between
rivulets of blood
flowing
for me.
