Stations of the Cross by Timothy Radcliffe

Author:Timothy Radcliffe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Eighth Station

THE WOMEN OF JERUSALEM

During his journey to the cross, the only people whom Jesus addresses are women: Mary, his mother, and the daughters of Jerusalem. Mary’s heart is pierced by sorrow. But the women probably do not know Jesus. They are not his disciples. They are probably just fulfilling a pious duty of ritually mourning a man who has been condemned to death. They were professional mourners. In the icon, two of them do not even look at him.

Jesus says to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children. For behold, the days are coming when they will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the breasts that never gave suck!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us’; and to the hills, ‘Cover us.’ For if they do this when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” (Luke 23:28-31). Now their grief is formal and ritualistic; one day it will be profound and heartfelt.

Even in his agony Jesus feels deeply the pain that will be theirs when Jerusalem is destroyed. He is touched by people’s pain in the pit of his stomach, and he enjoys their joy more than they do themselves.

Saint Paul tells the Romans, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15). But egotism muddies the purity of our responses. Our joy may be qualified by bitterness: Why did I not get to marry that beautiful rich heiress? Why wasn’t my book such an amazing success? Or, thank God I have not got cancer, or the sack, or whatever. Donald Nicholl tells of a blind man who sat outside a Japanese Buddhist temple. He said that he always knew when he was in the presence of someone who was holy. When that person “expressed his gladness at another’s good fortune, all you heard was gladness. When he expressed his sorrow, all you heard was sorrow.”

God’s promise is that he will take out our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. A heart of flesh is one that shares another’s joy without a hint of jealousy and another’s sorrow without a tiny bit of schadenfreude. Unqualified joy is only possible when the ego no longer impedes a spontaneous identification with the other person and we no longer see the other person as our rival. Until then our happiness will always be insecure, keeping an eye open for competitors who will knock us off our perch. May the Lord chip off our stony hearts the thick rind of egoism that makes us dead to what others live!

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