Jesus Takes Up His Cross

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.

R. Because by Thy holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.

Pilate delivers Jesus to be crucified. The soldiers strip him of the purple robe, put his own clothes back on him, and lead him out. John's Gospel records that "carrying the cross himself, he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha" (John 19:17). After the scourging, after a night without sleep, after the mockery and the blows, Jesus shoulders the heavy wooden beam of the cross and begins the final journey.

This station in the Scriptural Way corresponds to the second station of the Traditional Way, but its placement here — after the garden, the arrest, the trials, the denial, the scourging, the crowning — gives it an additional weight. We have followed Jesus through the interior suffering of Gethsemane and the institutional suffering of the religious and civil trials. Now we arrive at the physical suffering of the carrying of the cross. Everything that has come before was preparation; this is the final movement toward the consummation of the sacrifice.

"Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me" (Matthew 16:24). Jesus said these words before his Passion; now he enacts them. The carrying of the cross is not an accident of the Passion — it is a deliberate image. The disciple follows the master. The path of the Christian is the path of the cross-bearer. Every legitimate form of Christian suffering — borne in faith, united with Christ's offering — participates in what Jesus does here. His cross gives meaning to ours; our crosses, offered in his, become a sharing in his redemptive work.