Ninth Station - Jesus falls a third time

“Because the Sovereign LORD helps me, I will not be disgraced. Therefore, have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame.” (Is. 50,7)

The Son of God succumbs under the weight of the cross. He who healed the man who was blind from birth, who cured the paralytic, who raised the dead, collapses in a disappointing spectacle: Were all these displays of strength against the forces of evil over the past four years no more than an ingenious trick? Has the Spirit of God abandoned the One who claimed to be like God?

But, in the light of the resurrection, all these questions that accompany our doubts fade. Our eyes rest on a God who did not pretend to be a man; a God who is God, yet poor and threatened in His human frailty, like so many other people with tragic stories: like Sonia, whose feeble voice asks us to pray with her because she can go on no longer: the terrorists have just massacred seven members of her family in the Sahel, in Burkina Faso.

 And like the Sawadogo family, who saw their lives upended and turned into a nightmare from one day to the next because the soldiers of death arrived and expelled them from their village with no warning.

So many men and women in the IDP camps in our country are like Christ: exhausted, dignity trampled, wounded in their bodies and in their minds.  
But let us look at Christ. He stood up again, driven by His love for the salvation of men. The contemplation of this scene challenges us to not take part in the disgrace of others. It also inspires us to adopt the right gestures and words to accompany those who suffer injustice, who are victims of terrorism, or who lost hope in life for one reason or another.

Prayer

Lord, for the third time you fell under the weight of the cross. Truly it is heavy. But your love for God and your fidelity to your mission are the two arms that will pull you back up on your feet. You understand those who have collapsed, fed up with a life marred by terrorist violence, and you understand those who linger in doubt because the footprints of your presence have been erased by the evil of man. Grant us the grace of forgiveness, the strength and the resilience of the virtue of hope, because with you nobody can be confounded.