Jesus falls 3 times

the Way of the Cross

Jesus falls three times...

The tradition that Jesus fell three times beneath the weight of the
Cross evokes the fall of Adam - the state of fallen humanity - and the
mystery of Jesus' own sharing in our fall. First Letter of Saint John
speaks of a threefold fall: lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and
the pride of life. He thus interprets the fall of man and humanity
against the backdrop of the vices of his own time, with all its
excesses and perversions. But we can also think, in more recent times,
of how a Christianity which has grown weary of faith has abandoned the
Lord: the great ideologies, and the banal existence of those who, no
longer believing in anything, simply drift through life, have built a
new and worse paganism, which in its attempt to do away with God once
and for all, have ended up doing away with man. And so man lies fallen
in the dust. The Lord bears this burden and falls, over and over
again, in order to meet us. He gazes on us, he touches our hearts; he
falls in order to raise us up.
Man has fallen, and he continues to fall: often he becomes a
caricature of himself, no longer the image of God, but a mockery of
the Creator. There is a more profound meaning in this fall, "though he
was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to
be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being
born in the likeness of men... He humbled himself and became obedient
unto death, even death on a Cross" (Phil 2:6-8) the meaning of his
whole life is seen: his voluntary abasement, which lifts us up from
the depths of our pride. The nature of our pride is also revealed: it
is that arrogance which makes us want to be liberated from God and
left alone to ourselves, the arrogance which makes us think that we do
not need his eternal love, but can be the masters of our own lives. In
this rebellion against truth, in this attempt to be our own god,
creator and judge, we fall headlong and plunge into self-destruction.
The humility of Jesus is the surmounting of our pride; by his
abasement he lifts us up. Let us allow him to lift us up. Let us strip
away our sense of self-sufficiency, our false illusions of
independence, and learn from him, the One who humbled himself, to
discover our true greatness by bending low before God and before our
downtrodden brothers and sisters.
We have considered the fall of man in general, and the falling of many
Christians away from Christ and into a godless secularism. Should we
not also think of how much Christ suffers in his own Church? How often
is the holy sacrament of his Presence abused, how often must he enter
empty and evil hearts! How often do we celebrate only ourselves,
without even realizing that he is there! How often is his Word twisted
and misused! What little faith is present behind so many theories, so
many empty words! How much filth there is in the Church, and even
among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!
How much pride, how much self-complacency! What little respect we pay
to the Sacrament of Reconciliation, where he waits for us, ready to
raise us up whenever we fall! All this is present in his Passion. His
betrayal by his disciples, their unworthy reception of his Body and
Blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the Redeemer; it
pierces his heart. We can only call to him from the depths of our
hearts: Kyrie eleison - Lord, save us...

cardinal ratzinger