What if He didn’t get up? What if, after the third time He fell, He just decided to lay there in the desert sand, the sun beating down on Him, blood and sweat streaming from His entire body, and He chose to say – this is enough, I can’t take this anymore, I’m done? He knew what His Fathers plan was for Him and for all of us, and why He was to do this – but what if Jesus gave in to the temptation to quit? What would the world look like today? Would we even be here? What kind of lesson would that had taught?
People look at the story of the Passion and think – how could we treat the Son of God like that? Here was an innocent Man, the Messiah, and we totally turned our back on Him, mocked Him, and executed Him. How could we have done this? But yet, you look at our world, and our lives, and we allow wrongs to happen all the time. And at other times, these bad things happen to us or those we love through no fault of our own, for no apparent reason – they just happen – and it’s hard for us to understand why this is so.
Why do I have to accept this cup? Why do I have to bear this cross? We may ask this of God all the time, and Jesus, the divine Son of God was no different. He asked the same thing!
But yet, bad things do happen. It’s a part of life. And so, we need to be able to deal with them as they occur. We need to be able to deal with the stresses and challenges we encounter in life. And so, if God were to simply send His son to us, and show us a bunch of miracles and then a flash of light, and Him ascending to Heaven on a cloud with bands of angels around Him singing, it would have been a mesmerizing and unbelievable sight alright, but it would not have been what we needed. God did this before, in a way, by doing things like parting the Red Sea and giving Moses the 10 commandments atop the mountain, and all those other miracles, but the Israelites needed the journey – those 40 years in the desert – to bring them together as a people and build a faith. We need the Way of the Cross to make us stronger and better. It cannot happen overnight.
So yes, the Passion of our Lord was brutal and painful and grotesque, but it had to happen this way. On top of all His miracles and signs He performed, and the lessons He taught that were captured in the Gospels – Jesus had to accept this cup before Him – and walk this walk, carrying His cross the way He did, and even though He fell, and it was excruciatingly painful beyond belief, He continued to get up and fight. He continued to press on and bear that cross and walk the path laid out before Him.
Why? There are so many reasons why. The readings for today, especially the Passion of the Lord we recite from Luke, are jam-packed with so many lessons and meanings. For this reflection, I could go in a number of directions, but there is one theme that is speaking to me today – the continuous need to stand up and fight, no matter how heavy the cross in our lives, no matter how hard the struggle.
In today’s world, it is so easy to give in to the temptations of worldly pleasure, convenience, comfort, and the easy road. It’s all too easy to be overcome by all the evils we see on TV and the Internet and all the chaos and anger and hate around us, and give in to the temptation and become angry, and hateful and resentful ourselves. And in this world of instant gratification, it’s difficult to embrace the trials that come our way with patience, and perseverance, and humility.
We want our problems to be over – right now! We want God to answer our prayers – right now! We think, I didn’t do anything to deserve this… Why did I get cancer? Why did those people attack me because of my race? Why am I persecuted for my faith – a faith in a God that is so beautiful and pure and good? During these dark times in our life we ask, just as is lamented in the Psalm today, and that Jesus asked on the Cross – Why God, have you abandon me?
We need to have a way to deal with things like this, and a way to maybe see them from a different perspective, and a way to build strength and character in ourselves. Or in dire circumstances, we simply need hope, and to know that there is a purpose for all this, and a grace to help us through it.
So if Jesus had simply stayed down after that third fall, and did not get up, what lesson would that have taught us? We would have learned that, in the midst of problems and direct evils that we face in this world, that we should just stop fighting and realize that there is no hope, that there is no greater purpose, that we are all alone and there is no greater power to help us. We would have fallen into despair and had Jesus not continued on, we would all be doomed. We would not have a faith and a means, or the grace with which to encounter our worldly struggles and fight through them.
But He didn’t stay down. He got back up, and carried that Cross, and endured His Crucifixion for us – not only to save us for our eternal life, but for us to use His Way of the Cross as the model in our own lives. He taught us how to encounter obstacles that come our way.
He taught us how to encounter sin.
The sins we encounter on a daily basis – both those we commit and those inflicted on us by others – can burden us and weigh us down. And if we are especially deep in sin, perhaps through an addiction, or anger and resentment towards others, or through poor decisions we have made, we can often feel that there is no hope. We try to do better, and then we regress. We keep making the same mistakes over and over. Jesus understands how we feel. He felt every bit of this as He was going through His Passion.
And so, as we encounter our struggles, Jesus speaks to us:
“I know how you feel. I know how hard it is. I stumbled and fell too. I felt your burden. And no matter how hard you try, I know how difficult it is to continue down the path to Heaven because the struggles are great and the temptation to stop and give in is right there in front of you. It would be so easy to give in to the immediate gratification. And I know how it is to fall, and feel as if the whole world is falling down on you too, as the cross fell onto me. I know this. I feel this. I understand. But you can’t give up. If you fall into sin, if you make a poor decision, if you fall because you just cannot go on, know that I can help you. Through me, you can go on. I will not give you any more than you can handle. Look to me, and I will give you strength. But you have to look up. You have to get up. You have to fight. It’s not so much about whether you continue to sin, I know you’re not perfect, and that you will continue to fall from time to time. But it’s about what’s in your heart, and your desire to do better and better yourself, and it’s about your desire to keep striving towards me. This is what I want to see in you. This is why I endured the Cross, so that you would have an example, and a game plan with how to handle trials. And it’s also the Way of the Cross that builds strength and character in you so that you can become that better person, and be able to better endure the things the world throws at you, and make you stronger for the journey to Heaven. But you’ve got to get up. You can’t quit. Seek me, and I will help you.”
Jesus didn’t stay down. He got up. And so should we. We must listen when He speaks to us. If we stay down, we lose hope and we’re lost. But if we continue to get up, ask Him to forgive us, and keep fighting, keep trying to do good, this pleases Him and He will give us the grace we need to overcome anything. We must accept our crosses with humility, patience and perseverance. In time, their purpose will be made known.
Why did Jesus continue to get up? So we would…
(Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 22; Philippians 2:6-11; Luke 22:14-23:56)
