Station VII : Jesus takes up His cross

John 19: 6, 15-17

6When the chief priests and the police saw him, they shouted, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ Pilate said to them, ‘Take him yourselves and crucify him; I find no case against him.’ 15They cried out, ‘Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!’ Pilate asked them, ‘Shall I crucify your King?’ The chief priests answered, ‘We have no king but the emperor.’ 16Then he handed him over to them to be crucified.

So they took Jesus; 17and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew* is called Golgotha.

Some Background to the Scripture

Pilate tells the Jews to do something for which they have no authority; they are dependent upon him to carry out the sentence. In stating, “We have no king but Caesar”, the Jewish leaders renounce their very identity as men of the Covenant, and in so doing, they reject their God.  Their blind desire to have Jesus crucified has led them to reject everything for which they have lived.

Reflection

Experience without reflection is simply a moment of chronos, an instant of time with scarce significance. It is reflection that turns chronos into kairos, a moment of significant time. To teach reflectiveness we must be teachers of silence. Peter Steele wrote once, the rolling stone gathers no moss, and nor does it gather any other form of life. “Be still, and know that I am God”. Without this pausing for reflection, we will not ponder and if we do not learn to ponder, there will be no wisdom, no seeing of the traces of God’s presence in our lives.

Bishop Greg O’Kelly, The New and the Old Clothes. The New Wine and the Used Wineskins, Tasmanian Catholic Education Conference 2014

 

Reflection Question

How comfortable am I with silence?

Prayer

Teach me to pray.

Response

Without regular reflection, we too can speak and act in ways that are hurtful and that do not reflect our own truth.  Spend some time slowing down with one of the online prayer experiences on the Sacred Space website.