He (Father Zossima) has lived with true faith, and has come to it through a conscious dedication of himself. He has suffered, which for Dostoevsky is purification. For this reason he acknowledges and bows down to Dmitri, who himself will suffer. Man should take upon himself the suffering and the responsibility for the sin of all men, and not simply for himself, which helps to justify the existence of such seemingly evil creatures as Fyodor, as such characters as his sons shall, in one way or another, accept the suffering for his sins as their own. This suggestion of a shared suffering gives hope that Dmitri and Ivan might turn to faith as well. The faith of Zossima is the ideal, and is in stark contrast to the ideas that Ivan has come to. His message remains one of love and truth as found in the Bible, and is one regarding the two greatest and most essential elements of faith and salvation. Love and truth bring belief in that which we can not understand. This is what Ivan, and intellectual skeptic, can not accept, that love and truth will result in believing in that which is an inexplicable mystery.
So Father Zossima's experiences the "tragic sense of life" and sees it as an opportunity to take responsibility for the sin of all men. In other words, we should all emulate Jesus Christ and put the sins of the world on our shoulders by spreading love and truth.
That's a great ideal, but there are few people who can actually reach it. That's the real "tragic sense of life"- human beings are born to sin and are incapable of universal empathy. That's why there are global wars fought between religions. That's why ethnicities and classes clash generation after generation; their differences are irreconcilable. There's definitely people out there who have accepted their sins as well as the rest of the world's, but it's a slippery slope. How many commandments is that person willing to break and yet still feel that they are spreading truth and love? 2? 5? 9? If a person says they're supporting the war on terrorism, are they REALLY killing someone? If a person doesn't love thy neighbor every single day, are they really breaking tenth commandment? What qualifies as 'work' on the Sabbath? How does one go about separating the sinners who don't spread truth or love to the ones who do? People can preach and put on a mask every Sunday, but when they look deep down inside, the person they find may not be even close to the ideal.
The world is not as black and white as Father Zossima sees it. There are more than two categories of: those who do God's work and those who don't. God's work might be an insurmountable task anyway.
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