V. Simon the Cyrenean helps Jesus to carry His Cross

“And, going out, they found a man of Cyrene, named Simon; him they forced to take up His Cross.”

Jesus is exhausted. Although He is the Almighty, He wills that His Sacred Humanity, laden with all the sins of the world, should feel the weight of justice and explation. But He wants us to help Him to bear “His Cross. Simon represents us all, and Christ asks all of us to share in His sufferings ; we are His disciples only on this condition: “If any man will come after

Me, let him... take up his cross, and follow Me.” The Father has decreed that a share of sorrow should be left to His Son’s mystical body, and a portion of expiation should be borne by His members. Jesus wills it likewise, and it was in order to signify this Divine decree that He accepted the help of the Cyrenean.

But, at the same time, He merited for us the grace of fortitude to sustain trials generously. In His Cross He has placed the unction that makes ours tolerable ; for, in carrying our cross, it is truly His own that we accept. He unites our sufferings to His sorrow, and He confers upon them, by this union, an inestimable value, the source of great merits.

Therefore, says St Paul, “ Let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us: looking on Jesus, the author and finisher of faith, Who, having joy set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame, and now sitteth on the right hand of the throne of God. Think diligently upon Him Who endured such opposition from sinners

THE WAY OF THE CROSS a against Himself; that you be not wearied, fainting in your minds.”’

My Jesus, I accept from Your hand the particles that You detach for me from Your Cross. I accept all the disappointments, the contradictions, the sufferings, the sorrows that You permit or that it pleases You to send me. I accept them as my share of expiation. Unite the little that I do to Your unspeakable sufferings, for it is from them that mine draw all their merit !