The Third Station, Jesus Falls for the First Time.

We turn again to our previous meditation that 'my yoke is easy and my burden light' and think on how this came to be so. Our burden became light because Jesus was killed for us and rose again on the third day to free us from our sins and give us the bright hope of eternity with Him. This fall exemplifies how difficult it was for Him and the sacrifice He had to make for us in order to redeem us. In ancient legend, Gods generally are strong, powerful war mongers and that is what the people chosen by God expected, but they were given a gifted orator, a man of compassion and love, a mis fit, really, who spoke in parables and miracles and who truly set us all free. When the other gods were strong, he was weak, when the other gods were pictured vanquishing enemies, He bled on calvary for us, until His Sacred Heart stopped beating and He gave up His Spirit. That we have any hope today, that society does not crumble, that we have respect for human life, is all down to His sacrifice, which shows His humanity as he stumbled and fell under the weight of the cross. But He got up and continued the long walk to death, started at his birth when Simeon told His Mother that a sword would pierce her heart also.

I always try to remember this walk to Calvary when we process into Church on Sunday morning , turn by the baptistry and see the table of sacrifice in front of us and think on how very lucky we are, as the people of God, to have access to the unbloody sacrifice at all times and I suppose that I shall always spend my life walking to the House of God until, one day in the far distant future I hope, I begin the great adventure and start the last leg of the journey. Whatever has happened before and whatever will happen in the future, I will know that I have had it much easier than the King of Kings.

V. Truly He hath bourne our grief.

R. And carried our sorrows.

Let us pray.

O king almighty, strengthen thy soldiers with thy might: that the passion of thine only-begotten Son may so cleanse them who fight in the arena of this mortal life; that, the course of their warfare ended, they may recieve the reward of immortality; through the same Christ our Lord. Amen.