Stations

All people have ‘crosses’ to bear.  But, presently, I feel more like Simon of Cyrene, called to assist a friend carrying a tremendous burden where anguish has overtaken physical loss.  I refrain from using my friend’s name as I write below.  I know that several readers intimately know of so many others who suffer relentless agony and despair; aging parents, the terminally ill, struggling and/or lost children, separation and divorce, injustice, violence, degenerative diseases, the indigent.  AND they, too, walk in the steps of Jesus. 

So much is graphically written with respect to the physical pain of Jesus’ suffering throughout the Passion.  But upon reflection, I think the greatest anguish Jesus suffered occurred in Gethsemane.  The anguish and despair never let up.  Before entering the garden, Jesus delivered his most profound gift of love, his body and blood in the bread and wine after washing the feet of those entrusted to him.  Soon the most extreme shift was about to occur as those he compassionately served were about to turn on him. I can think of no greater suffering than to be betrayed by those one loves.  Jesus was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground. (Luke 22:44) 

My friend is frequently prone to anxiety, he often hikes along Castlewood State Park’s bluffs to erase them.  Having already survived liver and colon cancers, he loves the outdoors, grateful to fish, hike, cycle.

 Jesus condemned to death.  On January 4, after a freakish accident, still unexplained by medical analytics, a fall in his kitchen left him virtually paralyzed, a quadriplegic lying in his blood for nearly 2 1/2 hours before being discovered.  Though he has sensation in his arms and legs, he was left with no movement or use of arms, legs, hands, and feet.  Painful spasms constantly fire at random times interfering with physical and occupational therapy.

Jesus takes up his cross.  In addition to stitches closing gashes on the crown of his head and forehead, he wears a brace supporting his head and neck following a laminectomy and fusion of five vertebrae.  His beard, itchy, grows out of control.  His hair matted from blood needs shampoo and cutting.  He’s cold, but nobody’s around to cover him.  Someone brushes his teeth.  Food he cannot remove irritates his gum-line.  He stares ahead through smeared out-dated lenses.

“What have I done to deserve this?”  Anxiety incredibly high, he wants life to end.  Feeling guilt, frustration, anger, he indicts, “Where is he?  God never gives us more than we can handle?”

God is more devastated than anyone by what happened to my friend who has selflessly given so much.  True, God never gives us more than we can handle, but nature and our human condition can overwhelm us.  God did not create a perfect world.  He allows the world to evolve, the good and the bad.  We are the hands of God, His angels, and we shall not abandon the suffering just as God promised.  We need community.  We pray to God to change us and thus, to change the world.  Though I may turn away, God is always at my side.

Jesus falls the first time.  Some strangers clothe him.  His nose drains over his chin.  He cannot move.  Itchy on his eyelids, cheeks, beneath neck brace, under nose … he cannot reach any of those.  Torture continues.  He sits silently in his room, thirsting, helpless, physically incapable to trigger his need to nurses or aides.  Pictures of Gerber’s Baby Food race through his mind as a friend spoons food to his lips.  They clean his face as drool dribbles over his chin. 

Jesus meets his Mother.  I wonder what words Jesus’ mother, Mary, might have shared with her Son along his path as people jeered to have her beloved put to death.  What did Jesus feel with her touch?  Perhaps, her touch, her eyes, her tears spoke more than any words she might have said or wanted to say.  I imagine my readers have shared in the pain and suffering with loved ones and know so much better than I what Mary’s moments were like with her dying son.

He’s lost all control over his bowels.  He’s embarrassed that he must lie in his waste until others come to clean and diaper him like a helpless newborn.  He wants to bathe, but must wait for someone to do it for him.  Catheterized 24 hours a day, his urine trickles into a bag velcroed to his leg.

            “I’m having dark thoughts.  I don’t understand why God brought this upon me.  What’s He punishing me for?”

            Your accident is contrary to an all-loving God.  God did not send this accident as a warning, punishment, or as part of some grand plan.  God is holy, perfect unconditional love; a love I will never fully grasp.  He does not dictate his authority through fear, disease, or oppression.  Never in the life and work of Jesus, did Jesus take away from or bring harm amongst the people even those who tortured and put him to death.  Jesus brings new life out of destruction, forgives sin, delivers love.  He is all about building the Kingdom.  Yes, He can create good from out of the bad, but he does not in some twisted manner allow evil so that He might prove or exercise His goodness.  

  

Simon of Cyrene made to bear Jesus’ cross.  I, too, wonder how Simon of Cyrene felt, forced to assist Jesus with the cross and the betrayals weighing heavily upon the bloodied man’s shoulders.  Did Jesus and Simon talk?  And if so what did they say to one another?  Perhaps, an embarrassed, insulted, frightened Simon grew in strength and endurance as he entered into this tortured man’s presence.

      

He desires to walk out of his body and leave it behind.  Depression and anxiety rise so high he wants to take his life.  Doctor heavily medicates, sedates him to the point he does not recognize staff or visitors.  Harnessed in a canvass cocoon, his lifeless body is hoisted from a ceiling lift and lowered like a sandbag into his wheelchair. 

            “I can’t figure out what God is trying to teach me through this!  I want to come out of this body and leave it behind.  Kill it!  God can go to hell!”

            God’s a big boy and can take care of himself.  He doesn’t need anyone to defend him.  So, if your prayer is terse and damning, by all means deliver it.  He can take it.  God may assist us in growth out of a tragedy or injustice, but God does not will tragedies upon us to teach us lessons or as punishments. 

            I agree with Jesuit author, Richard Leonard.  “I think it is entirely appropriate to believe that life – from the womb to the nursing home – is not allotted a span, as such, by God, but that our body will live until it can no longer function, for whatever natural or accidental reason.  God is not an active player in this process, but again, has to take responsibility for making us mortal.”  That said, our relationships with God are grace-filled mysteries to me.  

Veronica wipes Jesus’ face.  He needs help relieving painful cramps in the middle of the night.  The night shift nurse has difficulty understanding English.  He struggles.  She struggles.  He has an uncontrolled bowel movement.  Odor chokes him.  Sleep, rest elude him.  He cannot shake a persistent cough which racks his fused neck.  To offer relief, a vacuum tube is required to remove mucus. 

Jesus falls a second time.  Bruising the size of a dessert plate suddenly appears at the base of his tailbone.  An open wound, a gash nearly 2 inches long like that of a knife, invites infection from his excrement.  The angles of his bed and wheelchair have ambushed him.  Both need to be accurately adjusted, monitored, and manipulated by staff and visitors because he has no control or sensation at that location of his body.  A wound specialist and medicated dressings must attend to his bowel movements.  He misses the wedding for relatives.  He anticipated celebrating the occasion the day he received the nuptials invitation.

Jesus meets women of Jerusalem.  He wobbles crashing from one side then to the other during a physical therapy session.  He hopes for accomplishment until a bowel movement occurs.  He recalls the same occurred during occupational therapy the day before.  The remainder of his session is cancelled as cleanup begins; return to room, canvass wrap, cocoon lift from chair into bed, diaper exchange, waste cleanup, wound suave applied, new shorts, hoist from bed back into wheelchair.  Today was a bit faster, only forty minutes elapsed, but the therapist needs to see her next scheduled appointment.  Depression and anxiety take her place.

Jesus falls a third time.  Held upright in a harness, his lifeless body dangles between parallel bars before his ever-optimistic therapist.  Dizzy, he is lowered into his wheelchair just as nausea erupts upon himself and the one assisting him.  Nurses have cleaned up after each of two consecutive bowel movements and ceiling-hoisted him back into his wheelchair only to anticipate a third coming.  Indignity strikes.  Instead, he is hoisted into a special toilet chair over which a lined waste basket is positioned below until his movements are complete.  He misses supper with other patients with whom he’s become friends and must eat his meal alone this night.  Depression eats with him. 

Jesus is stripped of garments.  Admitted to rehab now completing his fourth week, he seems to have lost short-term memory.  He does not remember his amazing therapists’ names despite working with them daily.  He’s forgotten some visitors who’ve stopped by.  Most importantly, he has difficulty remembering the ordered sequences of steps required for basic exercises or therapies essential to improvement.

Jesus is crucified.  Medications used to control anxieties steal his personality leaving a hollow shell of his humanity behind.  He longs to bask in the freshness of a beautiful day outside, but no one is available to wheel him outside into the warm air, gentle breezes, singing birds.  His mind cries; Doesn’t anyone know the outdoors do more for me than the pharmacy of drugs and counseling you force upon me each day?  The transparent bird feeder attached to the window of his room has failed to attract birds.

Jesus dies on the cross.  Raced by ambulance to the hospital, he is thought to have an intestinal blockage.  He arrives and must wait in the open emergency room for nearly three hours amongst many who have the flu and colds.  It’s discovered he has no intestinal blockage, but he has contacted the norovirus.  He is quarantined five days; no visitors, no PT, no OT therapies, muscles begin to deteriorate after making gains into five weeks.  Depression, anxiety, hijack his sleep.  Is he starting over?

Jesus is taken down from the cross.  He ponders life.  He is an avid master fly fisherman.  He stares at a fly fishing magazine cover a fellow fisherman had given him.  Tears fill his eyes.  “I will never fish again.”  “I have these terrible thoughts I know I should not have.”  “I pray to God to let me die.”  “He doesn’t do anything.”  He’s losing faith.    

Jesus is laid in a tomb.  Insurance is timing him out.  He must find a new place for assistance.  He has continued to make progress, but going back home may never be possible.  What do I have to do to stay at the rehab center with my therapists so I can improve?  Depression and anxiety escort him.  He requests more medication.   

“…, spiritual sanity rests in seeing that every moment of every day God does what he did on Good Friday, not to allow evil, death, and destruction to have the last word, but to ennoble humanity with an extraordinary resilience, and through the power of amazing grace, to enable us to make the most of even the worst situations and let light and life have the last word.  Easter Sunday is God’s response to Good Friday:  life out of death.”

                                                       Richard Leonard, SJ. author of Where the Hell is GOD?