Presence

Dear Lord, help me to be open to You for this time, as I put aside the cares of the world. Fill my thoughts with Your peace, Your love.

Scripture

Luke 23:26

As the soldiers led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus.

Reflection

Cyrene was an ancient Greek colony, beautifully set in a fertile valley beneath the wooded uplands of Jebel Akhdar in what is now northeast Libya. The 7th Century BC Greeks who settled Cyrenaica, were directed to this spot by Berber tribesmen who told them that there was a “hole in the heavens” here. Through this “hole” abundant and life-giving rain fell to create a lush expanse in the wastes of the Sahara.
By the time Simon of Cyrene was born, Cyrene had come under Roman rule. The names of his two sons, Alexander and Rufus, reflect the Greek and Roman influences in Cyrene and suggest that Simon was very comfortable with the other cultures in his home town. He may well have been a wealthy Hellenised Jew – devout enough to want to make the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but nonetheless living an assimilated, cosmopolitan life in his native Cyrene.
Now this Jewish Cyrenean is standing on the road to Golgotha, caught up in the melée of the crucifixion procession. The flat of a Roman spear is placed on his shoulder: under Roman law soldiers had the right to press local people who were not Roman citizens into limited service without their consent (Jesus was probably referring to this when he urged, at the Sermon on the Mount. “If anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.”)
We can be certain that Simon did not welcome his humiliating task. Yet at this moment in time, all unknowing, he – like the founders of his native city seven centuries earlier – is standing under “a hole in the heavens”. The blood and sweat which rain down on him will transform his life. One would have expected Simon to put the memory of his horrible experience behind him as quickly as possible, but his two sons, Alexander and Rufus, will become sufficiently prominent in the young Christian church to be mentioned by Mark and Paul. If they had become committed Christians it must have been as a result of their father’s brief encounter with Christ on that Good Friday.
Just at this point of Simon’s journey, however, there can be no glimpse of what is to come. The journey from Jerusalem to Calvary begins and ends in darkness. The suffering is unmitigated, the sadness unrelieved. Christ’s own words from the cross seem to be a cry of despair. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Prayer

Lord, in shouldering his distasteful burden, it seems that Simon discovered that sometimes it is enough just to be in your presence: “I have been found by those who did not seek me; I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.” (Romans 10:20) 

How often have I shouldered your cross unwillingly! You have laid it on my shoulders, and I have seen only the burden. I have seldom paused to reflect that if the woman who touched the hem of your garment was instantly healed, how much more powerful might be the sharing of your own cross.

Amen

Glory to you, Father, source of all being,

to you, Jesus, Word made flesh,

to you Holy Spirit, Comforter,

as it was before time began,

is now and shall be into the future.

Amen.