The Ninth Station: Jesus Falls the Third Time
(Those of us who have had the privilege and honor of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land always make Jerusalem part of the holy time. There, although the Jewish Temple has been replaced by a grand mosque, we can see the very places we read about in the New Testament, the actions of our redemption through the life, passion, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Many make the way of the cross, the Via Dolorosa, an ancient prayer service with stops at places that commemorate events of Our Lord’s tortuous journey to the place of His execution. Some of the stations, as they are called, are taken directly from the Gospels, some are inferred from the practice of crucifixion, and a few come from the more reliable Christian traditions.)
We have arrived, shortly after Jesus encounters the women of Jerusalem, at the place of execution, a little hill called Golgotha, or Calvary. And we envision Jesus falling for the third time. But Jesus began His fall, like a seed into the fertile soil, many hours earlier. St. Mark tells us that after the Last Supper, Jesus took His lead apostles, Peter, James, and John with Himself further into the place called Gethsemane. There He showed them the depths of His heart, greatly distressed and troubled, even “to death.” He asked the three to wait and watch while He went forward to pray to His Father. And there, he fell, collapsed on the ground, and prayed that, if possible, the cup of suffering might pass from Him. But He added, as He did in His great prayer, “not what I will, but what thou wilt.” In His prayer and anguish, St. Luke records that He sweated blood. That was Christ’s first fall, and His bottom-line prayer, that the Father’s will to save humankind be accomplished.
Somehow, I think all or most of us have been exactly where Our Lord was when He saw the hill and the scaffold before Him. We’ve been in grave difficulty, with money or career or relationships or our Christian life. We see before us nothing but trouble, made complex with uncertainty. There may be a gang of ill-wishers ranting at us and hoping for our demise. We have done everything we could do and more. Our muscles are aching, and we have nothing left to carry us up the hill, so we collapse.
Many Christians have a kind of Monophysite imagination when it comes to Christ. Yes, He was human, we admit that, but He was, first of all, God, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. So He had reserves of power that none of us can claim. Certainly, He made it up the hill. Certainly, He bore the pain. Certainly, He went through it all because He was and is divine. But it’s clear from Scripture that, particularly in His suffering and death, He had put aside all that power and glory and endurance. In St. Paul’s words, He humbled Himself, let Himself fall, even unto death on a cross. He did that through His human endurance and total conviction that this was God’s will from all eternity, that His brothers and sisters might be saved from sin and death.
The first fall of the first human was Adam’s, in the garden, and that set up all the rest. The second fall was that of the Second Adam, Jesus, collapsing in sheer human dread, in the garden of Gethsemane, praying "Thy will, Father, be done." The last fall was this one, at the foot of Golgotha. Jesus then picked Himself up from the ground and walked the last few yards to the scaffold, so that those who believe in Him will not have to fall into eternal pain and death.
