Station V

Monday, July 22, 2013:

I watched Mel Gibson’s, The Passion of Christ, yesterday evening… yes, I was bored. Of course, I know of the controversy over its content (it’s supposed anti-Semitism) and, of course, it was a Mel Gibson opus with over-the-top realistic blood and violence. However; because it is drawn, although with extreme embellishment, from the texts honored by Christians for the past two-thousand years, it still has some gems to consider.

            The scene where Christ is struggling with the cross on the way up the hill (in which Simon is forced to help Jesus) is especially poignant because Simon was so reluctant to do so and had to be forced by the Romans to take the cross. The Gospels of Luke and Mark makes the point that Simon, a Cyrenian, was just passing through… probably stopped to watch the spectacle… no unlike craning one’s neck to see a car wreck as you pass on the freeway. It is the fifth Station (I was raised Catholic and, long after I abandoned that faith, I have loved the Stations of the Cross) and the symbolism of it is that some of us are unwilling to pick up the cross… to help out in any realistic way if the task looks difficult and is a bloody mess that will mess up my clothes. I would rather donate something than to do that. What the hell is a Cyrenian anyway?

geo 5,411