II. Jesus carries His cross.

Behold the wood of the Cross…

Pause and hold your heart and the world in your hands.

Upon His sentencing, Jesus takes up His cross. He bears His cross on His shoulder and begins to make His way to Calvary.

Why is the Lord doing this? Why does He have to save us this way—to suffer so much, to die such a terribly painful and humiliating death? Must He?

Why not an easier, less painful way of saving us?

Surely, if God is all powerful, He could have picked another way, and He could have spared His only Son from Calvary.

What could Jesus be thinking of as He accepted the cross?

He was thinking of us.

We will never completely understand the mystery of the cross, but this much seems clear to theologians and scholars of the Sacred Scriptures:

In becoming fully human, our Lord Jesus wanted to experience every possible human condition including the most unpleasant and painful ones. Only by embracing all things human can He bless every human experience with His presence and His light.

It seems then that Jesus accepted His cross because He wanted to make sure that no one could ever say that he or she is beyond God’s love and mercy. So yes, even the victims of torture and violence, even those who are murdered, even those who are condemned as public criminals—they cannot claim that Jesus isn’t close by because through His cross, He has been there.

Listen to the song “To Find You” from Sing Street, and imagine Jesus speaking the words to you:

Wherever you may find yourself in this crazy world of ours, even in the worst of places, He wants to assure you that He is always on His way to find you.