Jesus Falls the Third Time

Today’s poem is another sonnet by Rev. Malcolm Guite. It comes from Guite’s collection of poems written on the Catholic Stations of the Cross. Three of those stations comprise separate occasions where Jesus stumbles and falls under the weight of the cross. This poem is for the ninth station of the cross–Jesus’ third fall–and it is perhaps the most personal poem I’m sharing with you all this week. There are times when life feels both futile and overwhelming. There are times when we become possessed by a despair so strong that it threatens to overcome us. Guite’s sonnet serves as a powerful reminder that there is no depth of pain or despair that we can experience that has not also been experienced by the very God who created us. 

As a pastor, you will never hear me tell anyone experiencing difficulty that their suffering is part of God’s will. Nor will you ever hear me teach that pain is redemptive or something to seek out because it connects us to Christ’s suffering. However, in times of my own personal suffering or when ministering to someone experiencing pain, I am extremely grateful that our God intimately understands our suffering. One of the miracles of the incarnation is that there is not a human high or low that our God has not experienced.

“As they led him away, they seized a man, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming from the country, and they laid the cross on him and made him carry it behind Jesus. A great number of the people followed him, and among them were women who were beating their breasts and wailing for him.” -Luke 23:26-27

(While there is no scriptural record of Jesus falling while carrying the cross, the idea of his multiple stumbles is an interpretation of Matthew 27:32, Mark 15:21, and Luke 23:26, where Simon of Cyrene is forced to help Jesus carry the cross toward his execution at Golgotha. It is unlikely that the soldiers would have forced an onlooker to carry the cross had Jesus not struggled under its burden.)

IX Jesus falls the third time

He weeps with you and with you he will stay

When all your staying power has run out;

You can’t go on, you go on anyway.

He stumbles just beside you when the doubt

That always haunts you cuts you down at last

And takes away the hope that drove you on.

This is the third fall and it hurts the worst,

This long descent through darkness to depression

From which there seems no rising and no will

To rise, or breathe or bear your own heartbeat.

Twice you survived; this third time will surely kill,

And you could almost wish for that defeat

Except that in the cold hell where you freeze

You find your God beside you on his knees

Rev. Ryan Young