NINTH STATION
Jesus falls for the third time
Leaving behind unhealthy nostalgia
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?... No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us!” (Rom 8:35,37).
Saint Paul lists all his sufferings, yet he knows that Jesus was there before him: Jesus, who on the way to Golgotha fell once, twice, three times. Overwhelmed by hardship, persecution, the sword; weighed down by the wood of the cross. Drained! He seems to say, as we do, in our darkest moments: I can’t take it any more!
It is the cry of those persecuted, the dying, the terminally ill, those who strain under the yoke.
But in Jesus we also see strength: “Although he causes grief, he will have compassion” (Lam 3:32). He shows us that in affliction, his consolation is always present, a “surplus” to be glimpsed in hope. Like the pruning which the heavenly Father, in his wisdom, performs on the branches that will bear fruit (cf. Jn 15:8). Not to lop them off, but to make them bloom anew. Like a mother in labour: in pain, she cries out, she endures the pangs of childbirth. Yet she knows that they are the pangs of new life, of spring flowers blossoming on branches recently pruned.
May our contemplation of Jesus, who falls yet rises once more, help us to overcome the kinds of narrowness which fear of the future impresses on our hearts, especially at this time of crisis. Let us leave behind our unhealthy nostalgia for the past, our complacency and our refusal to change, and the attitude that says: “But we’ve always done it this way!”. Jesus who stumbles and falls, but then rises, points us to a sure hope which, nourished by intense prayer, is born precisely at the moment of trial, not after or apart from it!
We will be more than conquerors, because of his love!
PRAYER
Lord Jesus,
Lift up, we pray, the unfortunate from the ground,
Raise the poor from the dust, set them with the princes of the people,
and grant them a seat of glory.
Shatter the bow of the strong and revive the strength of the weak,
for you alone enrich us by your poverty (cf. 1 Sam 2:4-8; 2 Cor 8:9). Amen
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