Good Samaritan
Station of the Cross (5)
Fifth Station:
Jesus is helped by Simon
We adore you O Christ and we praise you,
because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.
The march to Calvary had barely begun when it became obvious to the soldiers that Jesus might not make it to the place of execution on His own… He had been beaten too severely and lost too much blood. This presented a problem because they were not allowed to put criminals to death inside the city. And so, they ordered an anonymous member of the crowd to help Jesus carry the Cross to Calvary, which was a located just outside the walls of Jerusalem.
As far as the soldiers were concerned, their problem was solved. But for Simon of Cyrene, the man who had been forced into service against his will, it was a different story.
The last thing Simon imagined when he came home from the fields on that Friday afternoon was that he would be forced to help a criminal carry his cross to the place of execution. What did he ever do to deserve such a fate? He was a respectable citizen, a hard-working man, a family man, the father of Rufus and Alexander.
As he was thrust under the Cross and began to struggle with its weight amidst the chaos and noise, we can be sure Simon must have cursed his luck for being in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
And yet, as often happens, that unexpected event turned out to be a blessing in disguise, and not just any blessing, but the defining moment of his life — his own personal encounter with Christ.
We can only imagine how grateful Jesus must have been for the momentary relief Simon provided for Him, and how abundantly He must have blessed this good and simple man.
One of the great ironies of life is that many of the most important and meaningful moments of our lives come to us unexpectedly, often disguised in the form of problems or situations we would like to avoid.
Fr. Walter Ciszek, a Jesuit whose cause for beatification is currently being considered, knew something about this. In the 1930s, he went to Russia to re-evangelize the country, only to be thrown in prison shortly after he arrived. Initially, he lamented his fate because he felt it prevented him from accomplishing what HE had set out to do. But, after spending 18 years in a frozen labor camp in Siberia, he finally understood that God’s will is found, NOT in our own ideas about what His will for us must be, but rather in the circumstances, places, people, and problems He puts in our path each and every day. In Fr. Ciszek’s case, it was precisely in his captivity, and his inability to carry out his original plans, that the seeds of his holiness were sown.
I think all of us have experienced this in one way or another, this idea of God writing straight with crooked lines. We visualize our lives going in a certain direction only to encounter unforeseen problems that seem to derail our plans. Grudgingly, we end up settling for “second-best”, only to realize later that it was “first-best” after all.
And yet, how hard it is for us to accept this. Regardless of how many times we may have seen the hand of God at work in our lives, we still find it difficult to put our trust in Him. Our first reaction when things don’t go according to plan, especially when God puts somebody’s else’s problems on our lap, is to curse our luck, as Simon must have, and wonder why God is making things so difficult for us.
Doesn’t He know how good we’ve been?
Can’t He see how hard we’re working?
Things are hard enough without Him putting new roadblocks in our way… why doesn’t He pick on somebody else?
Why do we have to pay for the sins of others?
Well, because this is exactly what Jesus Himself did: He paid for the sins of others… for OUR sins… for MY sins. It wasn’t fair, and it certainly wasn’t easy. But because He did, because He chose to do the will of the Father when He might have preferred to do something else, the course of human history was changed forever.
The fact that we sometimes recoil in the face of difficult circumstances, does not mean we have no faith, it just means we’re human. The key is not shying away from the situations God puts in front of us, and doing the best we can while putting our faith in Him.
This is what Simon did and was blessed beyond his wildest dreams. So it will be with us.
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