The Crushing Weight of the Cross

Growing up, Good Friday was always one of my favorite days of the liturgical year. I find it no coincidence that almost every year, the weather that day in southern California would drastically shift from sunny, blue skies to gloomy, crisp air…and sometimes even rain.

My family instilled in us the importance of keeping vigil the Passion of Christ. We weren’t allowed to turn on any electronics or do anything recreational—not even playing with neighborhood friends. Good Friday was reserved for family, but most of all, Jesus. 

Awaiting the 3 o’clock hour to visit Jesus at my home parish by venerating the Cross, for me, was equally, if not more, anticipatory than awaiting the Easter bunny to scatter his eggs all around our yard on Sunday. Excitement, in hindsight, is a strange word to associate with Good Friday, but that is exactly what my heart would feel at the thought of kissing Jesus’ Cross in our quiet, still church. It was all I wanted to do. It was simultaneously the most and the least I could do for my Jesus. If it were socially acceptable, I could lie beside the Cross at my Church for hours.

After each member of my family would venerate the Cross, we would take some time of prayer in the church and then meet outside to conclude with the Stations of the Cross. This time last year, I became a mom for the very first time, only one week postpartum, visiting Jesus’ Cross in the Church, walking the garden with a stroller and a sleeping newborn at my side.

The past year has not been at all what I would have expected for my personal life, and as I reflect on the Passion of Christ, what keeps coming to mind is the crushing weight of the Cross. 

When I close my eyes and reflect on Jesus’ Passion story, from His arrest all the way to Him taking His last breath, I can’t help but still lovingly focus on the Cross—the heaviness, the immense pain, the splintering wood digging into His very flesh. The Cross pushed His body’s limits, leaving Him to fall over and over and over again on that treacherous hike toward Golgotha. That was just His body…I can’t begin to fathom the crushing of His soul.

As I continue to prayerfully imagine these events, before you know it, I am under the weight of that Cross alongside Him. I am looking into His eyes, and I am met with a gaze of loving sadness. I am also painstakingly aware more than I ever have been before that my suffering, the soul-ripping pain I have experienced lately in my life…crushes Him. Our sins and those of the world (which become our suffering) fall like endless iron weights on His Cross. In that sudden gaze I hold with Jesus’ eyes, I am known and understood. I am not alone.

He has shared my same tears, the yelling out to God in my distress, the deafening loneliness, everything…and more.

It is my lifelong prayer now as a mother that my own son would know these things: that whatever suffering he may endure, Jesus endured it for him first. That our God is good, and death or sadness does not have the final say.

So, I come this Good Friday like I usually do, but in many ways it is different than before. 

I still come with that “giddy” excitement—but this year, there is more of an awareness of gratitude overflowing within me for the great love Jesus has for me. 

I also no longer will have a sleeping newborn at my side—but a noisy, wiggly toddler crawling all over the place. 

And I will still bend low to kiss His Holy Cross—but this time holding my son, pointing to the wood, and whispering, “Kiss Jesus, Asher,” and watching him do the same.