Women Following Jesus on Via Dolorosa, Pietro Lorenzetti-1320
There is a powerful scene in the movie, The Passion of the Christ, when Jesus is carrying the cross on the way to Calvary. The Blessed Virgin Mary is following Him closely, attending Him with great love and unfathomable sorrow. Suddenly He falls beneath the weight of the cross. The sight of her son falling to the ground brings Mary’s memory back to a similar incident when Jesus was a child. The scene changes in the film to a much more peaceful moment—perhaps in Nazareth—but Mary experiences that same anxious concern as she sees her child fall to the ground with some force. She runs to the little boy, who is somewhat shaken but otherwise perfectly well, and she embraces him with tenderness and relief.
In the film, the scene then changes back to Jesus, struggling to get back up on the Via Dolorosa. Mary has run over to Him, helpless to stop the agony of that present moment. Jesus, as if sharing the same earlier memory with her, turns to her and affectionately says, “See, I make all things new.”
It is a strange scene in several ways, because that Scripture passage being referred to, this “making all things new,” is not technically from Jesus’ passion but is aligned more closely to the Resurrection. It is found in the Book of Revelation, and we listened to it this morning on the Fifth Sunday of Easter. Speaking about the new heavens and the new earth, the risen Jesus, seated on His glorious throne, says that God will wipe away every tear from our eyes. In the triumph of the resurrection He announces, “Behold, I make all things new” (Revelation 21:5).
Nonetheless, the scene from The Passion of the Christ is very fitting because it is only through the suffering of the cross that we are given the hope of a new heaven and a new earth. It is only through the Via Dolorosa that we find the road to glory. The suffering of Christ has indeed made all things new.
This same paradoxical coupling of suffering and glory is found in the Gospel this weekend. Jesus has gathered together with His disciples for the Last Supper, on the night before He will offer His life in sacrifice on the cross. We hear that Judas Iscariot has just left to betray Him, and we know that the darkest moment of Jesus’s life has arrived. Remarkably, Jesus says to them:
Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.
—John 13:31
Now? Really? It would make sense to say “After this entire ordeal is over, then will the Son of Man be glorified,” or perhaps even “In spite of all this betrayal and suffering, God is still glorified.” But Jesus says neither of those things. “Now,” He says. Now.
St. John’s Gospel makes it very clear, many times, that the glory of God is revealed at the cross. It is not the case, of course, that God is glorified in suffering. Suffering is not glorious or valuable in any way, in and of itself. The truth is that God is glorified in His generous outpouring of love in the midst of suffering. In the cross of Jesus Christ the tremendous love of God is revealed. The sacrifice of love on the altar of the cross is what makes all things new.
St. Paul and St. Barnabas, in the Acts of the Apostles this weekend, communicate this same difficult yet liberating reality. We hear that they had preached the Gospel in a certain city, and “made a considerable number of disciples,” but chose to return to Lystra, Iconium and Antioch instead of remaining in that place. Acts gives us two specific reasons for their decision: to strengthen the spirits of the disciples, and to exhort them to persevere in the faith.
They “strengthened the faith of the disciples” (Acts 14:22), of course because it had been weakened. It was flagging. They were struggling, and Paul and Barnabas wanted to make sure their faith would endure.
Secondly, they “exhorted them to persevere in the faith” (Acts 14:22). Apparently, they had become discouraged or were perhaps in danger of giving up. Making sure that they did not mistake the trials they were facing with the notion that something had gone wrong or that God had forgotten them, Paul and Barnabas encourage them to persevere and help them to see the connection between suffering and eternal life, between the Via Dolorosa and the road to glory:
“It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God.”
—Acts 14:22
Are we sometimes tempted to see the trials and the crosses of our lives as a sign that something has gone wrong or that God is absent? Do we become discouraged and weakened in our faith when we see the challenges before us or go through difficult moments?
In conclusion, there is an amazing species of trees found predominantly in the Western area of the United States and Canada called the Lodgepole Pine. It is very much like other pines trees with one significant difference: its cones. Year after year, the pine cones drop from those trees but they are unable to open under normal, natural circumstances. They simply fall to the ground and eventually become covered over and forgotten. The only thing that can open them is intense heat. But when a wildfire devastates the forest in which they are located, destroying everything in its path, the cones of the Lodgepole Pine will open, and release the seeds that will become new trees able to provide the shade in which everything else can begin to grow again.
The trials of life are not easy to endure, and the way of the cross is hard. This weekend we are reminded, though, that we are never alone in our suffering. God is present and guiding us through all the trials of life. “It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22), but the Via Dolorosa will guide us surely on the road to the glory of God, to the place where God will make “all things new” (Revelation 21:5).
