The Book of the Holy Rosary: Part II, Chapter VIII. Jesus Carries His Cross
The Holy Scripture Narrative
“And bearing His own Cross, He went forth to the place which is called Calvary, but in Hebrew, Golgotha; and there followed Him a great multitude of people, and of women, who bewailed and lamented Him; but Jesus turning to them said: Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me, but weep for yourselves and for your children, for behold the days shall come wherein they will say, Blessed are the barren and the wombs that have not borne, and the paps that have not given suck; then shall they begin to say to the mountains: Fall upon us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if in the green wood they do these things, what shall be done in the dry?” (John xix.; Luke xxiii.)
“A marvellous spectacle,” writes St Augustine. “As seen with impious eyes, an object to be mocked at; as seen by piety, a great mystery. Is the looker-on an impious man, he will say, ‘What an exhibition of ignominy!’ is he a pious man, he will say, ‘What a tower of strength for the defence of faith!’ If he is the former, he sees a King carrying the instrument of His execution, in place of the sceptre, of His kingdom; if the latter, he sees a King carrying that to which He is about to affix Himself, and which He is hereafter to stamp on the foreheads of kings. That which makes Him an object of contempt to the impious is the very thing itself which will make the joy and boast of the hearts of the saints. In carrying His Cross on His shoulders, he commends it to the Paul who is hereafter to say, ‘God forbid that I should glory, except in the Cross of my Lord Jesus Christ and to the candle which is about to be lighted to give light to all that are in the house, and which may not be set under a bushel, He Himself carries the candlestick” (Tract, cxvii. on St John).
“Till the day break and the shadows flee away,” says the bride of the Canticles, in answer to the King’s invitation, “I will go to the mountain of myrrh and the hill of frankincense.” We have seen in the preceding Mystery the Victim chosen of God crowned for the consummation of His sacrifice with the thorns which the earth has produced as its offering to Him whose precious blood is about to remove the curse under which it has so long lain. We now see the same Divine Victim in the Fourth Mystery toiling along the streets of Jerusalem, bearing on His shoulders the wood of the Cross on which He is soon to die.
“He had but short time since,” writes Father Camphausen, “been cruelly scourged, crowned with thorns, spit upon, mocked, and condemned to death. The purple robe is now taken from Him, and He is again covered with His own garments, so that all can now recognise Him as One who is found guilty of being a public malefactor of the worst kind. See the ignominious Cross is laid upon His shoulders, and He embraces it with both His arms, though scarce able to keep from falling! See how He is hurried and dragged by the lictors through the streets of Jerusalem to the Mount of Calvary!” (Matt. Camphausen, S. J. Jesu, Christi Passio Adumbrata, vol. ii. p. 90.)
What are the words which He utters on this most dolorous of ways? “Daughters of Jerusalem,” He says to certain women who wept and lamented for His sufferings, “weep not for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.”
Such are the words that our Lord utters outwardly with His voice on His way to Mount Calvary, but inwardly and in the depth of His mind I seem to hear nothing else except the words above cited, “I will go to the mountain of myrrh. Oh, how bitter, how painful to Me will this mountain of myrrh prove! Nevertheless, I will go thither, I will take courage and go to the mountain of myrrh,—the mountain of death. I will go thither out of love to My Father, that I may be a Son obedient even unto death, like another Isaac. I will go thither for the love of men, that I may be offered up as a Victim for the sin of the whole world on the altar of the Cross. I will go to the mountain of myrrh, be the way thither never so bitter and never so beset with pain. I will go to the bitterest and most ignominious of all deaths. Behold I go!”
Here on His way to Calvary, laden with His heavy Cross, there are not wanting other words which He utters besides those of “I will go to the mountain of myrrh.” He not only invites us in these words to accompany Him and to follow Him, as Solomon invited the Sunnamite, but He constrains us to follow Him that we may suffer something for His sake; hence His words, Luke ix., “If any one will come after Me, that is, to heaven, to eternal blessedness, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow Me to the mountain of myrrh”—to the Mount of Calvary. For by this royal way of the Cross, and by no other, can faithful people journey on their way to heaven. Yes, He even threatens, saying, “He that taketh not up His cross and followeth Me, is not worthy of Me.” I acknowledge him not as Mine, He is not worthy of My name, to be called a Christian,—I reject, I refuse, I disown him. Oh no, Lord! Let each of us take up our cross daily, and let us bear patiently and willingly all that may befall us in the way of suffering. And thus let us follow, and say to our Lord, with even more earnestness than the Sunnamite said to Solomon, with deeds rather than with words, “With Thee, my Jesus, will I go to the mountain of myrrh.”
“It is sufficient,” says our Divine Saviour, “for the disciple if he be as his Master.” These words alone ought to be sufficient for those who in this Fourth Mystery contemplate Jesus Christ bearing His Cross to make them shudder at the false doctrine on which the great falling away of the people in Europe in the sixteenth century was based. Jesus, it was then said, had borne the Cross not as an example for us to follow, but as a substitute for us. The root of the error is not difficult to see. The antipathy of the old Adam to find himself hedged in and controlled by the commandments of God, is something extremely old and well known in the world. “The flesh,” says Christ, “lusteth against the spirit,” and does not of itself embrace the Cross willingly. “If it be possible,” were our Divine Saviour’s own words in His agony, “let this chalice pass from Me.” Simon of Cyrene bore the Cross after Jesus only because He was compelled to do so. Thomas à Kempis says, “Jesus has many lovers of His heavenly kingdom, but few bearers of His Cross; for all wish,” he continues, “to rejoice with Him but few wish to bear anything for Him” (Book ii. ch. xi.) All the antipathy which the old Adam has to be hedged in and controlled by the commandments of God offers more than a mere passive resistance to the doctrine in which the new Adam calls us to deny ourselves, to take up our Cross, and to follow Him. Thus Dr Faust complains in Goethe’s celebrated drama—“Deny thyself, deny thyself;
This is the old, the everlasting chime, Which dins unceasingly upon the ear of man, Which, through the whole of our most weary course, Each hour repeats with more and more of force.* Yet we cannot eliminate from His Gospel the words which Jesus Christ has * “Entbehren sollst du, sollst entbehren;
Das ist der ewige Gesang Der jedem an die Ohren klingt;
Den unser ganzes Leben lang Uns heiser jede Stunde singt.”
Goethe 1 9 Faust, Part i. Act i. spoken, for “heaven and earth,” He says, “shall pass away, but My words shall not pass away.” The new Adam calls upon the old Adam to deny himself, to take up His Cross, and to follow Him.
Let us hear what Thomas à Kempis says on this point.
“These words, ‘Deny thyself, take up thy Cross and follow Jesus,’ seem to many to be a hard saying. But it will be much harder to hear at the last the words, “Depart from Me, ye cursed, into the everlasting fire” (Matt. xxv. 41).
“For they who now willingly hear and follow the word of the Cross, shall not at that time labour under the fear of eternal damnation. This sign of the Cross shall be in heaven when the Lord shall come to judgment. Then shall all the servants of the Cross, who in this life shall have conformed themselves to the pattern of Him who was nailed upon it, draw near to their Judge with great boldness. Wherefore, then, dost thou fear to take up thy Cross, seeing that by it is the way to a kingdom? There is no salvation for the soul, neither hope of everlasting life, except in the Cross.
“Take up, therefore, thy Cross and follow Jesus, and thou shalt go to everlasting life. He hath gone before thee carrying His Cross, and has died for thee on the Cross, that thou mightest bear thy Cross, and learn to desire to die upon the Cross. For if thou shalt die together with Him, thou shalt also live with Him; and if thou sharest His humiliation, thou shalt be partaker of His glory” (Imitation of Christ, book ii. ch. xii., on the Royal Way of the Holy Cross).
“And now,” writes St Anselm, “O Lord Jesus my Redeemer, I adore Thee as very and true God. I believe in Thee, I hope in Thee, and I long with all possible longing for Thee. Help Thou my infirmity, while I incline myself before all the glorious signs of Thy Passion, by which Thou hast worked out my salvation. There breathes to me the sweet savour of life in all these things. Raise up, O Lord, my spirit by their life-giving savour from the death of sin; guard me through the virtue that comes forth from them, from the deceits of Satan; strengthen me that the yoke of Thy commandments may become sweet to me, and that the burden of Thy Cross, which Thou commandest me to bear after Thee, may become light and tolerable to the shoulders of my soul. For what is my strength that I should be able, as Thou commandest, to bear with an unbroken spirit so many and so various troubles of this life? Are my feet as it were the feet of stags that I should be able to follow Thee as Thou passest swiftly along the rugged path of Thy Passion? Hear, I beseech Thee, my prayer, and lay, I pray Thee, on Thy servant that sweet Cross of Thine, which becomes the Tree of Life to all that lay hold of it, in order that, as I hope, I may run cheerfully under it. I will bear after Thee, without growing faint. The Cross which comes from enemies lay on my shoulders. I beseech Thee lay on them the burden of that most Divine Cross, whose breadth is the charity that extends itself to all that lives, whose length is eternity, whose height is Omnipotence, whose depth is the Inscrutable Wisdom” (St Anselm, Meditation ix.)
By the grace of God, then, even the way of the Cross may come to abound in sweetness and in spiritual joys. And the Church sings of the Apostle St Andrew in words capable of encouraging the most timid and faint-hearted of her disciples. When the blessed Andrew reached the place where the Cross stood ready for him, he cried out, and said, “O good Cross, so many years desired, and now at length granted to my longing soul! with confidence and great joy I come unto thee; and do thou, in like manner, rejoice and be glad at receiving a disciple of Him who hung upon thee, my Master Christ” (Vespers of the Feast of St Andrew).