Station 3: Simon of Cyrene Helps to Carry His Cross

Cyrene was in Africa, suggesting that this man Simon had made the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Passover. He had come all that way for the most important feast of the Jewish faith so he might worship God in the temple. We might want to imagine that his help was a charitable act, a good deed done for Jesus’ sake. Instead we read that he was seized by the guards and made to do this noble thing. It’s likely that, before that moment, he didn’t even know Jesus. Still, he is enlisted in the way of the cross. There are times when we get drawn into the suffering of another, not because we want to, but because we are compelled. And yet to share the suffering of another may be to lighten their own burden, if only for the briefest of moments.