The Catholic Weekly 12 July 2020

8 12, July, 2020 F rom the archbishop catholicweekly.com.au By His death we live The Lord’s via crucis is a path of pain, suffering and deathwhich, paradoxically, leads to eternal life Isolated yet loving T he recently restored paintings of the Sta- tions of the Cross here at St Mary’s Ca- thedral are massive French oils, each weighing 200kg, bought in 1885 by Cardinal Moran from the Chovet studio in Paris. In most, Jesus looks Stations of the Cross from St Mary’s Cathedral sit in the studio awaiting restoration in 2019. PHOTO: GIOVANNI PORTELLI Stations of the Cross at St Mary’s Cathedral, have been resurrected by David Stein and his team. PHOTO: SUPPLIED at us, to engage, scrutinise or console. But in some He stares into the middle distance, dis- connected from those who are near Him but not truly with Him . There’s lots of talk of ‘social distancing’ at present, which hopefully means physical dis- tancing and not distancing ourselves socially or spiritu- ally. After all, as social beings, we cannot thrive in isolation. Yet the Way we’ve just walked with Christ was a very lone- ly one. The Way of the Cross is preceded by the scene in the Garden, where Jesus’ disci- ples are oblivious to His ag- ony and desert Himwhen He’s arrested. Peter, for all the hairy-chested promises of loy- alty, turns to jelly when chal- lenged by a servant-girl. Jesus is left to be tried in our first station with no advocate, no witness. How forlorn He must have felt when the Judge gave sentence (1st station). All alone, He took up the burden of the cross and, with it, the weight of humanity’s sin and brokenness, a weight so grave He stumbled three times (2nd, 3rd, 7th & 9th). Even when He encountered others along the Way – Mary, Simon Cyrene, Veronica, the women, soldiers and fellow criminals (2nd, 4th-6th, 8th, 10th-12th) – it was like the man cast adrift and dying of thirst, with “water, water ev- erywhere but not a drop to drink”. People there were, for sure, whole crowds of them, yet He felt so very alone. As He hung dying, Jesus revealed how bereft He felt by singing a Psalm of Lament, ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ It ends with a profession of faith and hope, but demon- strates He knew the abandon- ment many feel as well. Lepers or others with an infectious disease were treated in the ancient world as moral pari- ahs and spiritual excommu- nicates. None would even look them in the eye. So Psalm 22 continues, ‘A worm am I, and no man; a reproach to men and despised by the people. All who see me deride me; they curl their lips and shake their heads.’ Abandoned by His friends and even, so He felt, by His Father-God, Jesus dies alone, is taken down from the cross and laid in that lone- liest place, the tomb (12th- 14th). In the present pandem- ic, even more than normal, some know distancing, isola- tion and loneliness, so does God on His Way of the Cross. If we feel burdened by pres- ent restrictions on worship, work and leisure, we know these burdens are much light- er than those borne by many in our world every day and by Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP