Co-Redeemers
by Fr. Roger Landry - April 10, 2009
One of the most moving moments of Pope Benedict's recent trip to Africa was when he stopped at the Cardinal Léger Center in Yaounde, Cameroon on March 19. The center, founded in 1972 by the retired archbishop of Montreal, specializes in caring for young people suffering from debilitating handicaps and traumas.
It is painful to see a child suffering. It is even more heartbreaking to see a whole center of children in anguish. Such places often bring to the surface the question of evil and get people to question whether God exists or whether, if he exists, he is good. Many cannot see any sense to the suffering of children in the divine plan. That's one of the reasons why so many children diagnosed with handicaps or illnesses in the womb are tragically aborted.
When Benedict came to the center, however, he explained to the children — and through them to all of us — how important and precious they are to the mission of the Church. He unveiled for them their vocation as key coworkers of Christ in the salvation of the human race. He did so by reminding them that they are spiritual descendents of one of the most celebrated figures of early African Christianity, a person who is a guide for all Catholics this Good Friday.
"An African, Simon of Cyrene," the Pope said, "was given the task of helping Jesus to carry his Cross on the way to Golgotha. This man, albeit through no choice of his own, came to the aid of the Man of Sorrows when he had been abandoned by all his followers and handed over to blind violence. History tells us, then, that an African, a son of your continent, took part, at the price of his own suffering, in the infinite suffering of the one who ransomed all men, including his executioners. Simon of Cyrene could not have known that it was his Savior who stood there before him. He was 'drafted in' to assist him (cf. Mk 15:21); he was constrained, forced to do so. It is hard to accept to carry someone else's cross. Only after the resurrection could he have understood what he had done.
"Brothers and sisters, it is the same for each of us: in the depths of our anguish, of our own rebellion, Christ offers us his loving presence even if we find it hard to understand that he is at our side. Only the Lord's final victory will reveal for us the definitive meaning of our trials. Can it not be said that every African is in some sense a member of the family of Simon of Cyrene? Every African who suffers, indeed every person who suffers, helps Christ to carry his Cross and climbs with him the path to Golgotha in order one day to rise again with him. When we see the infamy to which Jesus was subjected, when we contemplate his face on the Cross, when we recognize his appalling suffering, we can glimpse, through faith, the radiant face of the Risen Lord who tells us that suffering and sickness will not have the last word in our human lives. I pray, dear brothers and sisters, that you will be able to recognize yourselves in 'Simon of Cyrene.' I pray, dear brothers and sisters who are sick, that many of you will encounter a Simon at your bedside."
To recognize ourselves in Simon of Cyrene and to recognize Simon of Cyrene in others is one of the most important spiritual fruits of Good Friday.
Today Catholics at the Colosseum, in the streets and in churches throughout the world will contemplate Simon at the fifth station and with him accompany Jesus along the way of the Cross. This journey with Jesus, however, is meant to continue each day as Jesus bids us to deny ourselves, pick up our crosses daily and follow him, saying that unless we do, we cannot be his disciple. In our task of carrying the Cross Jesus gives us, we can learn a great deal from the experience of Simon of Cyrene.
We know relatively little about Simon; in fact, the passion account gives us only one sentence: "And they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross" (Mk 15:21). From that phrase, however, we learn several things: first that he was almost certainly Jewish, since Simon is a Jewish name; second, that he was from Cyrene, a Greek colony with a heavy concentration of Jews in present day Libya; third, that he probably had come to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, which was the life-wish of every Jew living abroad; and lastly, that his sons Alexander and Rufus were well-known among the Christian recipients of Mark's Gospel, which is almost certainly a testimony that they were Christians, likely being brought to the faith by their father's encounter with the Lord.
St. Mark tells us he was "compelled" to carry the Cross by the Roman soldiers. It was not something he or anyone would have ever signed up for. Crucifixion was the most ignominious death imaginable. People used to mock those processing to their execution, to spit on them and hurl things at them. Simon likely knew that as he would be carrying Jesus' cross through the crowded streets of Jerusalem, many would likely think he was the despised criminal and treat him as one.
It's often that way with all of us. None of us really wants to carry a cross, which is a brutal instrument of suffering and death. Like Simon, we may need to be compelled to do it at the beginning. But it's through our encounter with Christ on the Cross that we come to an ever deeper union with him and share in his redeeming work.
What was it about carrying the Cross of a half-dead convict that brought Simon to conversion and to the faith? It's impossible, of course, to know precisely how grace worked in his soul. But I've always imagined that it was along the way to Calvary that Simon had an intimation that he wasn't shamefully carrying a cross that Jesus deserved, but that Jesus had been carrying all along the cross Simon deserved. It wasn't he who was doing the favor for Jesus but the other way around: Jesus was preparing to die for Simon on the Cross Simon was now bearing.
It was in this way that Jesus unleashed a cycle of compassion. Simon realized that Jesus was carrying the cross for him and he converted from being an unwilling participant to a co-redeemer and Good Samaritan. His eyes were opened to the secret means by which we complete what is lacking in Christ's sufferings for the sake of the Church (Col 1:24).
This is the conversion that is meant to happen in each of us. Taking up the Cross is not an optional part of the Christian life. The Cross — as well as the suffering and death associated with it — is, from one perspective, a just means of atonement for our sins. But when we grasp that Jesus came into the world to carry our cross for us, our experience of the cross is transformed from curse that alienates to a gift that unites us to the cycle of the Lord's compassionate love.
Jesus allows us to carry our cross — some of us more than others — for part of the salvific journey so that all of us will have the dignity of sharing a little in our redemption and the redemption of others.
This is the way we become members of the family of Simon of Cyrene and equipped from our own experience of suffering with Christ to help others live their vocation to bear their sufferings with him, too, until these sufferings are transformed into glory.
Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.
