Seventh Station: Jesus takes up his cross

Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover; it was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which is called in Hebrew Gol'gotha.
(Jn 19:14-17, Jerusalem Bible)

It is only in the Gospel of St. John that Jesus is said to carry his own cross. The other Gospels do not say that. They recount that Simon of Cyrene was asked to carry the cross of Jesus. In the traditional stations of the cross, Simon comes in only after Jesus suffers his first fall. The Gospels do not recount any fall but it would not be surprising if Jesus did fall. St. John’s Gospel reveals to us a very sad irony: Pilate, the non-Jew admits that Jesus is king but the Jews reject that idea, admitting Pilate’s king as their king.

Both St. Matthew and St. Mark indicate that the soldiers were the ones who led Jesus to the site of his execution. St. John and St. Luke do not indicate the actual people who led Jesus. Rather the impression one gets is that the Jews were the ones who led Jesus to Golgotha. The significance of St. John’s narrative should be clear: the Jews, who had rejected their own king, forces Him to carry the instrument of His death and leads Him to the place of execution. St. John writes a the beginning of his gospel: He came to his own home, and his own people received him not. (Jn 1:11, Revised Standard Version)

God is love. Whatever God wills of us has its beginning and end in love. When I admit God as my God, I admit that I shall do what He wills because His will is good for me. When I sin, I reject this notion. I do not go according to God’s will because I think I know better. In fact, when I act in sin, I am actually rejecting God as my God; I am rejecting love.

When Jesus took up His cross in his walk to Calvary, he did so for love of all humanity. (NB: Calvary is derived from the Greek word for skull) He denied Himself and did what was necessary for us. In his predictions of his passion, he says: “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” And he said to all, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.” (Lk 9:22-24, Revised Standard Version) We can see that when we imitate him, we take up our cross for the purpose of losing our lives for His sake. Only then will we gain the life Jesus wishes to give us: eternal life.

When I call Jesus Master and Lord, I am admitting that He is God. I am proclaiming that I will follow Him. That would include the carrying of my cross. When someone says that a particular suffering is a cross they must bear, it impresses me that the person sees the cross as something negative. Did Jesus consider his cross as the suffering he went through? True, the cross was the source of suffering for Jesus, but was it the suffering itself? The cross was the means by which He obeyed the Father in love. Physically, the cross caused him great suffering. I believe that the cross was an instrument of blessing for Jesus. The suffering he bore was a consequence of accepting the cross as the means of loving obedience. If I were to follow Jesus and carry my cross, I cannot view the cross as a necessarily evil that I must bear. Rather, I must view the cross as the means of obeying the Father. The consequence of bearing the cross might include suffering, but the cross itself is not the suffering. It is a tool for me to express my relationship with God the Father. Self-denial brings about suffering to a sinful self, but is itself an instrument for greater holiness. This sentiment is captured in the following verse of the hymn O Mighty Cross, Love Lifted High by David Baroni and John Chisum:

O Mighty Cross, O Christ, so pure,
Love held Him there, such shame endured;
His sacrifice on Calvary
Has made the mighty cross
a tree of life to me