Mtr Beth Clarke

Friends in Christ,

There is a detail in today’s Gospel that is easy to miss amid the dramatic account of Jesus’ Passion. It concerns a man named Simon of Cyrene, who is compelled to carry Jesus’ cross.

The scene may be familiar even if Simon himself is not. It is immortalized as the Fifth Station of the Cross, a devotional practice in Roman Catholic, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions. As worshipers move from station to station through art, prayer, and scripture, they accompany Jesus on his journey to Calvary, lingering over moments of suffering along this symbolic Via Dolorosa. Simon’s brief appearance is one of those moments.

Today’s Gospel tells us, “As they went out, they came upon a man from Cyrene named Simon; they compelled this man to carry his cross.”

Imagine how exhausted Jesus must have been. Most scholars believe he would have carried only the crossbeam (patibulum), which likely weighed between 75 and 120 pounds. Simon is merely a passerby when Roman soldiers pull him from the crowd and press him into service. He has no apparent connection to Jesus and perhaps little understanding of what he is witnessing. We are given no indication that he volunteers. Yet in an instant, his ordinary day is overturned by an extraordinary burden.

It is this sudden interruption that makes Simon’s witness so compelling.

Rarely do we choose the crosses we are asked to carry. They meet us unprepared, arriving through illness, grief, disappointment, or the unexpected needs of those around us. Like Simon, we may find ourselves bearing a weight that is not fully ours, compelled into a service we neither anticipated nor desired.

Yet in that unforeseen act, Simon becomes a disciple. Whether or not he understood whom he was helping, or the magnitude of what he was doing, he bore Christ’s burden and, in doing so, embodied Jesus’ own teaching that discipleship means taking up the cross and following him. In Christ’s deepest suffering, Simon quite literally helped lighten his load, if only for a moment.

His story reminds us that faithfulness is often found not in dramatic acts of heroism but in the quiet willingness to answer the demands placed before us, especially when they interrupt our best-laid plans.

How might Christ be inviting us, like Simon, to help carry another’s cross? And how might the interruptions we resist become the very places where we encounter him?

Yours in Christ,

—Mtr Beth