Isaiah 53:4

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

Meditation

I see you, Jesus, making your way to Calvary bearing our sins. I see you fall, hands and knees on the ground, in pain. With what great humility did you fall! And what great humiliation you now endure! Your human nature, your true manhood, is clearly seen in this fragment of your life. The cross you carry is a heavy one. You need help to carry it, but when you fall to the ground, no one helps you. Instead, people make fun of you, they laugh at the sight of a God who falls. Perhaps they are disappointed, perhaps they had a mistaken idea of who you are. Sometimes we think that having faith in you means never falling in life. Together with you, I also fall, and my ideas with me, those ideas I had about you. How fragile they were!

I see you Jesus, as you grit your teeth and, in complete surrender to the love of the Father, you get up and resume your journey. With these, your first, faltering steps beneath the cross, Jesus, you remind me of a child taking his first steps in life. Losing his balance, he falls and cries, but then keeps going. He trusts in the hands of his parents and does not give up. He is afraid but he keeps walking because trust is stronger than fear.

By your courage, you teach us that our failures and falls must never halt our journey, and that we always have a choice: to give up or to get up, in union with you.

Prayer

I ask you, Lord, give us young people
the courage to get up after every fall,
as you did on the way to Calvary.
Grant that we may always appreciate
the great and precious gift of life,
and that our failures and falls
may never be a reason for throwing it away.
We know that if we trust in you,
we will be able to get up again
and find the strength to keep going,
always.
Our Father…