Our People

Stations of the Cross

Good Friday

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
21/3/2008

“You cannot be a follower of mine, unless you take up your cross and follow me”.

Today we have walked with Christ the via dolorosa, the sorrowful way. We have considered quietly and solemnly what Christ endured from the time of being condemned to death until his body was laid in the tomb.

As we have followed the fourteen stations and pondered what Christ underwent for our salvation, our thoughts naturally move to a reflection on our own lives. The Way of the Cross causes us to be in touch with deeper realities in our own lives.

Maybe we identified with Christ in considering the sufferings we are having to endure in our life at this time. As in the example of Christ such sufferings can be physical sufferings, or they could be emotional and mental.

The physical sufferings of Christ were great indeed – the beatings, the scourging, the actual carrying of the cross, the penetration of the nails, the agony of hanging from a cross.

The Lord also had to endure great inner pain – the pain of rejection by the people he loved and served, the hatred and vindictiveness of the Jewish authorities, the injustice of his condemnation by Pilate, the mockery by the soldiers, the ignominy of hanging nailed to a cross an idle curiosity to those who were passing by.

We can only begin to fathom the depth of personal suffering that the Lord endured. The evangelists record that he cried out in anguish from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”  His anguish was so great that he felt abandoned by his own Father. His was a total darkness of spirit – he experienced even the absence of God.

We have our own sufferings – for some they are great, for others smaller. As we pondered the passion of our Lord perhaps we were conscious of the sufferings that burden our own lives. We may have burdens of ill health. We may experience pain on a daily basis. We may be afflicted with a terminal disease. We feel ourselves drawn into a half life of pain and the prospect of death.

Or our personal burden of suffering may be in the mind and heart. It may be a broken relationship in marriage or family. It may be the experience of suffering unjustly from others. It may be an inner struggle with self image, with depression, or with personal failure. There is a dark cloud hovering over our life. There is a dead weight on our spirit.

We watch Christ absorbing so much suffering, so much pain, as he goes to Calvary, and as our thoughts move to our own lives we become aware of the cross we are carrying. It is as though at that moment we hear Christ saying to us – “take up your cross and follow me”.

We become aware that we are not carrying our cross alone any more. We are walking with Christ as one who deeply knows what it is like. And, so we begin to carry our cross united with him. We walk our own via dolorosa alongside Christ.

In these moments of uniting ourselves and our sufferings with him, we offer up our sufferings with his. The passion of Christ was the price God was prepared to pay for the sin of mankind. Indeed this passion was not the victory of suffering, but its very vanquishing. It was an act of atonement. It was a cry for mercy – “Forgive them Father…”. Calvary would not be the end, but the tomb that held the lifeless body of Jesus would witness a glorious rising on Easter morn.

Human suffering is not a lost cause. It is not simply bad luck, or a grave injustice by a heartless God. Human suffering is a mystery, but its reality can be transformed. We, as Christians, unite our sufferings with Christ, and they are made strangely and wonderfully redemptive. It is as though Christ, who has plumbed the depths of human suffering, can place his hand over our suffering and allows it to become, mysteriously, transforming of our spirit, restorative of our heart. Gone is the dark cloud and in its place is a beam of light. The burden on our life is strangely lighter and more able to be borne.

Each of us has a cross – either small or large. We can try to carry it alone, or we can carry it with Christ. We can enter into his mystery of suffering, a suffering deigned by the love of the Father for humanity to be redemptive. The death of Christ on the cross would be the triumph of life over death. It would be the victory of mercy over sin. It would be the good rising over evil.

So the sufferings of Christ borne in obedience to his Father’s will, would become the triumph of the love of God over what could destroy the human spirit. “O death where is your sting?”

So today as we have quietly contemplated the Way of the Cross and entered into the depths of our own heart and life, allow a simple prayer to rise up: Lord Jesus you suffered so much for all of us, I will take up my cross and walk with you.