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> Jesus Will Help Carry Your Cross
Jesus Will Help Carry Your Cross
By Andrew Willard Jones [social-share]
Dr. Andrew Jones holds a PhD in Medieval History from Saint Louis University and is an expert on the Church of the High Middle Ages. He is the author of Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom of St. Louis IX and the pioneer of the Formed In Christ series of faith formation texts, as well as the author of several books in this series.
What he was, he remained and what he was not, he assumed” [LH, 1 January, Antiphon for Morning Prayer; cf. St. Leo the Great, Sermo in nat. Dom. 1, 2; PL 54, 191–192], sings the Roman Liturgy. And the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom proclaims and sings: “O only-begotten Son and Word of God, immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, you who without change became man and were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us! [Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Troparion “O monogenes.”]. (CCC 469)While Jesus remained who he was from all eternity, the divine Son of God, in time and history he was “incarnate of the virgin Mary” (Nicene Creed). This means he took on our human nature and lived an entirely human life:
For by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, He thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, He has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin. (Gaudiem et spes)When we say Jesus lived an entirely human life this is saying that Jesus is like us “in all things but sin” (Heb 4:15). He demonstrated this humanity in every aspect of his earthly life and had many common human experiences. Jesus even experienced the emotions of sorrow and distress, particularly the night before his Crucifixion. During the Agony in the Garden, he contemplated the tortuous death that he was about to experience and felt deeply troubled, so much so that he sweated drops of blood. While Jesus’ will never deviated from the will of God, that doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t have liked to avoid the physical pain that awaited him. He knew what was coming, and it grieved his heart. Even more than the physical suffering, Jesus suffered when his closest friends let him down. During his Agony in the Garden, Jesus grew frustrated when Peter, John, and James couldn’t manage to stay awake with him. Then, one of his closest followers, one of the Twelve Apostles, Judas, betrayed him outright, arriving at the garden at the head of a mob. When Jesus referred to Judas as “friend” and asked him what he was doing (Matt 26:47–51), can we not hear the sadness in his voice? That same night, as Jesus was being mocked and beaten, St. Peter denied even knowing him, not once but three times. At the third denial, “the Lord turned and looked at Peter” (Luke 22:61). This must have been a moment of extreme sorrow for the Lord, one to which, unfortunately, so many of us can relate. Death and sickness are a constant of human life, and Jesus didn’t avoid them either. In fact, he spent much of his ministry healing the sick and helping outcasts (see Matt 8:13, Luke 14:4ff., John 4:47ff., Luke 5:12ff.). In doing so, he personified compassion. The word “compassion” literally means “to suffer with,” and this is just what Jesus did. When he saw those who were hurting, he hurt with them. This is the nature of love. When you love someone, their joy is your joy, and their pain is your pain. God loves us completely. He feels our pain in a more direct and real way than even we do. Jesus, in the Incarnation, shows us this is true. He healed people, he helped them, and ultimately he went to the Cross and died for them. That death was both excruciatingly painful and humiliating. Because of it, not one of us, when we’re hurting, can say, “God doesn’t know what I’m going through!” He does. He has been there. And he remains ever ready to help us, heal us, and carry us as we carry our cross.