The Weight of the Cross

“Then he [Pilate] handed him [Jesus] over to them to be crucified.  So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha.”  (John 19:16-17)

Having brutally beaten Jesus and condemned him to death by Crucifixion at the instigation of the Jewish religious leaders, the Romans forced Jesus to carry the instrument of his execution, ie. the Cross.  

The Cross is more than just the means by which the Romans were to put Jesus to death.  The Cross is the totality of humanity’s sins from Adam and Eve’s first sin in the Garden of Eden up to Jesus’s life on Earth and beyond to the end of humanity’s time on Earth.  In carrying the Cross, Jesus is carrying the totality of humanity’s sin – past, present, future.

In carrying the Cross, Jesus is carrying our sins, all that we have done and all that we have failed to do, which has offended God, harmed our neighbor and ourselves and caused Jesus such suffering and agony.  

In carrying the Cross, Jesus is carrying the sins of abortion, genocide, pornography, human trafficking and slavery, exploitation of people, euthanasia, oppression of the poor, sexual abuse including by members of the clergy, adultery, religious persecution, offenses against the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, sacrileges against the Holy Eucharist, blasphemy, heresy, schism, LGBTQ sins, ingratitude for Jesus’s sacrifice for us, using the Lord’s Name in vain, not keeping the Sabbath Holy, and numerous other offenses against God and neighbor.  

In carrying the Cross, Jesus is also carrying the seemingly mundane and innocuous sins like gossip, slander, lying, cheating, and numerous other venial sins that we often commit and do not acknowledge that they are sins.  

On that Good Friday, Jesus is carrying all of humanity’s sins from Adam and Eve’s first sin up to Good Friday and forward to the end of human history when Jesus returns in Glorious Triumph.  

At the risk of massive understatement, that’s a lot of sin!  

That is a volume of sin beyond mortal man’s ability to comprehend.  

Only Jesus, the Son of God, empowered by Divine Love and love of humanity could carry that massive volume of sin.  The weight of our sins knocked Jesus to the ground three times but it could not keep him down.  Love of the Father and love of us lifted him up each time that our sins knocked him down.   “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life”  (John 3:16).