The fifteenth station

 ‘…As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him, and made him carry it behind Jesus’… (Luke 23:26)

Luke 22:14-23:56 (Year C: Palm Sunday – Lent 6)

Where are we at?

Lent has flown. So, how has it been?  In lent as in life we experience our own fragility. We also experience the graciousness of God often delivered through others in the many ‘small things’ – the spontaneous expressions of care, appreciation and support.  And then we encounter moments when sheer decency and humanity in another – possibly a stranger – catches us by complete surprise.

This Palm Sunday we enter into a very special week. For many it is the wind-down for a long public holiday with the prospect of the ‘clocks going forward’ in this part of the world and the long summer evenings to look forward in the not too distant future. What does Holy Week mean to us? 

The life of the Risen Christ is everywhere

A long reading – a very long reading – this Sunday prepares us for what is about to happen in the liturgy in the coming days. Liturgy is more than just a dramatization or symbolic re-enactment of a past event. It is a playing out of something real, tangible and life-changing here and now.  Images of feet being washed, the Sacrament shared, the empty sanctuary, the procession to the cross, the long vigil, the paschal candle and the singing of the Exultet reminds us year after year that our Lenten journey is a very visible sign of our own personal journeys.  There is suffering, passion and resurrection in our own personal lives. We know nothing of the anguish and pain of the person next to us whether in a line to reverence the cross or in a queue waiting for a bus that has been delayed. The ordinary and the supernatural are wrapped up together. The life of the risen Christ is everywhere in the depths of acute pain and worry.

Theologians may debate the question of God’s suffering. They are referred to this Sunday’s reading! Although nobody has a neat answer to the question of suffering we know that God turned suffering and death into victory not by glorifying suffering as some distortions of spirituality might infer but by drawing life and hope from where evil reigned.  God does not inflict suffering on anyone. Bad choices have consequences. And, ‘nature has it this way’ which entails suffering.  We can chose how to see suffering and how to possibly overcome it too with God’s help. But, we must walk the way with Jesus and this takes much courage.

Doing the stations

A popular tradition in many places during Lent, and not least on Good Friday, is the devotion of the Via Crucis (the Way of the Cross in latin) or ‘Stations of the Cross’. Tracing its roots in various stories and traditions including a few that are not strictly biblical, the ‘Stations’ provide a walking prayer exercise down and up the aisle or outdoors.  To those familiar with the practice now or in the past it entailed seven stations down the northern side starting with the trial and condemnation of Jesus by Pontius Pilate and a further seven stations up the southern side to stop at the laying of Jesus’ body in the tomb.  The resurrection doesn’t get a mention (that is until the Via Lucis, or the Way of Light, was inaugurated as a devotional). We arrive at the Via Lucis of our own lives through many a Via Crucis. The darkest hour is just before the dawn as the saying goes.  Before the fifteenth station is the fourteenth where we bury our old self in Christ. Author Bronnie Ware, in her remarkable book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying put it this way:

…it was the end of my life, as I knew it at least. But, I didn’t have to die physically. Only that old part of myself died, spiritually. Those old ideas of myself could not survive the bright light of my own love. The new life that had been quietly manifesting for years was finally able to be born. (p. 237)

We need a balanced spirituality that recognises the reality of life and death and new life.  We are not caught in some never-ending cycle of life such as in reincarnation beliefs. Neither are we condemned to a lonely, pointless and ultimately despairing sojourn that ends with death. Our calling and belonging is to a social body (that is, together) that moves onwards and upwards through many valleys, twists, reversals and falls though our destination is marked clearly if we allow ourselves to be taken there. On the way we meet fellow pilgrims some of whom may be overwhelmed by various things including their past, their weakness, their illness.  Like Simon of Cyrene we can help them to carry their cross (and not just our own). Carrying another’s cross? Surely, we have enough on our plate to carry our own!  The truth is that when we carry another’s cross we carry our own and love returns to us in a mysterious way that may not be evident until years after. So, the message of Holy Week and every week of the year is take up our own cross and someone else’s too by bearing with one another in patience and love: the fruits of suffering in patient love is resurrection and this resurrection will liberate us as much from false religion as it does from the idols of our age.   Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote on the 16^th July 1944 from his prison in Tegal near Berlin:

This is the decisive difference between Christianity and all religions.  Man's religiosity makes him look in his distress to the power of God in the world; he uses God as a Deus ex machina.  The Bible, however, directs him to the powerlessness and suffering of God; only a suffering God can help.  To this extent we may say that the process we have described by which the world came of age was an abandonment of a false conception of God, and a clearing of the decks for the God of the Bible, who conquers power and space in the world by his weakness.  This must be the starting point for our ‘worldly’ interpretation.

"Stations on the Road to Freedom" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer

from Tegel prison..

Discipline
If you set out to seek freedom, then learn above all things
to govern your soul and your senses, for fear that your passions
and longing may lead you away from the path you should follow.
Chaste be your mind and your body, and both in subjection,
obediently steadfastly seeking the aim set before them;
only through discipline may a man learn to be free.

Action
Daring to do what is right, not what fancy may tell you,
valiantly grasping occasions, not cravenly doubting--
freedom comes only through deeds, not through thoughts taking wing.
Faint not nor fear, but go out to the storm and the action,
trusting in God whose commandment you faithfully follow;
freedom, exultant, will welcome your spirit with joy.

Suffering
A change has come indeed. Your hands, so strong and active,
are bound; in helplessness now you see your action
is ended; you sigh in relief, your cause committing
to stronger hands; so now you may rest contented.
Only for one blissful moment could you draw near to touch freedom;
then, that it might be perfected in glory, you gave it to God.

Death
Come now, thou greatest of feasts on the journey to freedom eternal;
death, cast aside all the burdensome chains, and demolish
the walls of our temporal body, the walls of our souls that are blinded,
so that at last we may see that which here remains hidden.
Freedom, how long we have sought thee in discipline, action, and suffering;
dying, we now may behold thee revealed in the Lord.”