Stations five through eight focus on the people of the Passion.  These include Simon the Cyrene, Veronica, and the women in Jerusalem.  Each has a unique vantage point of the Passion of Jesus, and each is moved to assuage His agony in a different gesture of compassion.  In a paradoxical twist, as each person was inspired to reach out to Jesus, each was also profoundly and unexpectedly transformed by their suffering Savior.  Even during His Passion, Jesus healed.

Station 5: Simon the Cyrene Helps Jesus

Even when I reluctantly carry my cross as Simon did, it benefits my soul.” –Mother Angelica

When our youngest daughter, Sarah, was born with a rare craniofacial anomaly called Apert Syndrome, it was as if a new onus had been thrust upon us – a new life consisting of crisis management and enigmatic uncertainty.  Not only was Sarah’s condition an unwelcome surprise, but it was also a new cross for our family.

Sarah was born during Holy Week, and both Ben and I had been meditating on the Stations of the Cross prior to my going into labor.  We both fell silent at the fifth station, because we discovered ourselves as Simon the Cyrene: unassumingly passing through life with our typical rhythms and routines, yet startled and aghast at the prospect of carrying an unknown cross, a cross that was neither desired nor anticipated.

Yet this same cross became our saving grace.  Just as Simon discovered himself to be in an appalling situation, and he most likely accepted the task of assisting Jesus with trepidation and reluctance, Ben and I would have chosen for Sarah to be born as a typical child.  We didn’t want the cross of a medical diagnosis and a lifetime of surgeries and specialists.  We didn’t want the added financial burden or the stigma she would someday experience because of her facial differences.  Simon didn’t want to feel the weight of the Cross, but in carrying it, he intimately encountered Jesus.  This transformed him.  Similarly, Ben and I have been strengthened and nurtured by our unique cross of having a daughter who is medically fragile. 

We all get aroused from our comfortable existences from time to time.  The violence of the Cross is necessary to awaken us from our spiritual slumber.  We may protest when God asks us to carry a load we’d prefer not to bear.  We may reject the Cross, yet its profundity of love continues to beckon us.  The moment we capitulate to that abyss of Jesus’ love is the moment we have discovered life itself exists only within the parameters of redemptive suffering.  Herein lies the gift of the Cross.

Station 6: Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus

I want nothing but to have Thy face fixed on my heart.” –Plino Correa de Oliveira

During Jesus’ perceived abandonment by the Father on the road to Calvary, Veronica compassionately extended the simple gesture of wiping His face.  Imagine Veronica’s courage in the situation of mass confusion and frenetic fury engulfing her.  She was risking much to reach out and touch Jesus so tenderly, including her reputation, people’s opinions and judgment, and her own personal safety.  The desire to ameliorate Jesus’ pain, even if only for an instant, overwhelmed any qualms she may have experienced.  This was her gift of love to Jesus.

I consider the ways I, too, console Jesus with my small-yet-magnanimous acts of love.  At times I offer Him my tears, my gratitude, my work, my fears, or my lofty thoughts crammed in the middle of a hectic day.  These offerings, though small, alleviate the grievous wounds in Jesus’ heart: the indifference, ingratitude, blasphemy and sin that infect the people of our modern culture. 

Station 7: Jesus Falls the Second Time

If I keep my eyes on You and watch how You suffered, I will be able to bear my cross with greater fortitude.” –Mother Angelica

When Jesus fell the second time under the weight of His cross, all seemed truly desolate and hopeless.  His weakness appeared to prevail over His Divine strength.  He succumbed to the weight of the Cross – our sins, the darkness of evil, and the looming clouds of death and decay.  Yet He arose and persevered, forging ahead on His destined path to crucifixion. 

How often do I fall beneath my cross?  I falter, though I am aware of the ultimate glory that awaits me when I, too, pick myself up and advance on my personal path to sanctification.

All of us are given a unique passion that, in many ways, mimics Jesus’ Passion.  We are drawn to the hope of the Resurrection rather than suffocated by our miseries when we pick up our crosses after each fall and appeal to God for Divine Grace to uplift and uphold us through each struggle.

Station 8: Jesus Meets the Women of Jerusalem

Thou gave to these pious women their vocation: ‘Weep.’  Their great vocation is to weep for the chastisements that just and innocent men suffer as a result of collective sin.” –Plino Correa de Oliveira

I am the son or daughter of Jerusalem each time I silently meet Jesus in my pain.  I unite my current agony to His Passion as I weep bitterly and mourn my losses.  In this way, I participate in the wailing and groaning of the women of Jerusalem, who were at times overlooked but more often mocked and ridiculed.  Jesus did not ignore their acknowledgment of the gravity of His death.  Their tears were born that fateful Friday, born of an inexplicable love for their God.  My tears, too, speak a language of the heart that reaches the heights of Heaven.     

Somehow we all participate in the sufferings caused by social sin.  When our hearts are moved with empathy or grievous sorrow as we hear about violent acts, acts of indifference or even blatant heresy and blasphemy, we weep along with the women of Jerusalem.  We weep with – and for – the necessity of Jesus’ Paschal Mystery.  We mourn with Him, and our wounded hearts offer Jesus consolation that not all of humanity is lost to eternal damnation.  A heart that suffers is a heart full of love, earnestly waiting to embrace Jesus and journey with Him in His agonizing Passion.

We all know that suffering is not the conclusion to our life’s journey.  If it were, the Cross would be meaningless.  Pain and sorrow would lead to despondency and despair.  But we are encouraged by the hope and promise of new life in the Resurrection.  We are resurrected each time we participate in the Sacraments through holy preparation.  We are purified as we humbly confess our vices and struggles in overcoming sin.  The Resurrection is an eternal hope, not just an event following the Passion and Death of Jesus.  We are forever transformed by the power of the Cross that overcame death, so we cling to the dawn of day and the rising of the sun in each aspect of our spiritual expedition to Heaven.