Ponder and Magnify: A Rosary Podcast

S1, E11 - The Carrying of the Cross Bible Study (Luke 23: 24-28)

• John and Jessica Helling • Season 1 • Episode 11

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The mission of the Ponder and Magnify Podcast is to seek an encounter with Jesus through praying the rosary, relying on the grace of the Holy Spirit and the intercession of Mary. Join us as we dive into the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary! In this episode, Jess, John, and Fr. George discuss the account of Jesus Carrying the Cross from Luke 23: 24-28. Praise be to God!

Jessica:

Hello and welcome to the Ponder and Magnify podcast, where our mission is to seek an encounter with Jesus through praying the rosary, relying on the grace of the Holy Spirit and the intercession of Mary. I am so happy that you are here. Today I am joined once again by my husband, John, and Father, George Staley, and we are going to be diving into the fourth sorrowful mystery of the Rosary, which is Jesus carrying his cross, and I'm going to toss it over to Father George, as I usually do. Will you please open us in prayer?

Fr. George:

Absolutely In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Hol y Spirit. Amen. Jesus, as we reflect upon this scene in your life of you carrying your cross, we ask, Lord Jesus, that we may come into your most Sacred Heart, that we may abide in the graces that are present there. Jesus, we ask that, as we carry our crosses in life, that you are close to us, that you are near to us. Walk with us each step of the way. Help us to follow you. Jesus, we place our trust in you. We ask this in your most holy name.

Jessica:

Thank you so much. Okay, you guys, one word or phrase to describe how you are right now.

Jessica:

Father George, I'm going to kick it to you first.

Fr. George:

Yeah, I'm feeling particularly I said my phrase is alive in the Spirit, just prayer today was particularly good. I have a number of prayer periods where I'm falling asleep pretty regularly, but today we were locked in and awake and there was good praise and good conversation with the Lord. So just feeling particularly alive in the Spirit. John, what's your word or phrase?

John:

Going to go with the phrase today. It's pep in the step and that is because usually you know, get out a little early today around 4 o'clock instead of 5 o'clock. I was actually able to leave at 3 o'clock today, so I felt like it was like skipping school early, like getting out of work. So I was very excited to get home early, spend some time with the family before going and picking up our daughter from from school. So it was great.

Jessica:

I also very much enjoyed that. Um, my word is for right now is cozy. We've got another post-bedtime recording session. I've got on this pretty cozy sweater that I'm really excited about, and we've made some decaf coffee. That's nice and warm, holding the mug and enjoying that. So I'm feeling good and cozy and ready to dive in. So, Father George, I'm going to pass it over to you to do just that to help us dive in and get our Scripture going for us.

Fr. George:

For sure, just to set up the scene just a little bit. So Jesus is carrying the cross. In a really beautiful way, the church has also, in her tradition another devotional, called the Stations of the Cross, and that can be another way to enter deeply into this particular mystery, to extend it in a particular way. So, as Jesus was carrying his cross, sometimes people, you know, did he carry the whole cross? Did he carry? Some say that he just carried a beam of the cross. Either way, he had been by this point scourged and the crown of thorns and a sleepless night and sweated blood, and it was just brutal, extremely difficult for him in this moment. So, as we're getting closer to His final moment on Calvary, He just is carrying this cross, and so we'll dive into the Scripture for this particular passage and ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten our minds and our hearts.

Fr. George:

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. The verdict of Pilate was that their demand should be granted. So he released the man who had been in prison for rebellion and murder for whom they asked, and he handed Jesus over to them to deal with as they wished. As they led him away, they took hold of a certain Simon, a Cyrenian who was coming in from the country, and after laying the cross on him, they made him carry it behind Jesus. A large crowd of people followed Jesus, including many women who mourned and lamented him. Jesus turned to them and said Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me. Weep instead for yourselves and for your children. Now we just invite the Holy Spirit to come and to speak the word to our hearts.

John:

So after you read this, Father George, I kind of got hung up on one part that I'm hoping you can give me some clarity on. So you know, He gets Jesus, gets handed over, and there's this mob essentially that's wanting to, you know, kill Jesus and, you know, have Him go on this march to get crucified. And there's this small contingent of women who were there behind him kind of mourning and feeling bad for him. And Jesus turns around and says do not weep for me, but instead for yourselves and for your children, like I don't know what. That just kind of confuses me. It's like it feels like almost like, uh, not like a warning, but just something of like I don't know what do you think was his message in saying that?

Fr. George:

Yeah, no, that's really good insight and a really good question. Two things come to mind. One is a historical reality that Jesus was prophesying something that was going to happen later. In 70 AD, Jerusalem was sacked by the Romans and the temple was destroyed and incredible calamity for Israel at that time. And so Jesus is using this moment as a moment of prophecy, like what actually is going to be a sorrow for you coming up is this reality of the fall of the temple and the fall of Jerusalem, and it will cause you great sorrow and there will be weeping. You know you weep for me now, but there will be this weeping later. So there is a bit of that prophecy, forecast of of suffering that is going to come.

Fr. George:

And I think the second thing I would say would be the spiritual application of what Jesus is saying that yes, you weep for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children, Like weep for your own sins and your own. What has led to this moment and the sorrow that's in your heart from a lack of trust in the Lord or from falling into a severing of the relationship or break of the relationship with God? That that's where the sorrow is to be directed into that as well. Like, don't forget to do that, I think, is something that Jesus is saying in that moment, yeah, so that moment is just particularly powerful in meditation, just thinking about our own, where, you know, would we be there in that scene, imagining ourselves in that scene? Do we weep? Do we let the pain that comes out from suffering-- Do we relate that to Jesus? Do we weep for our own sins and do we ask God for just that increase in trust and His own presence in our lives, wherever it is that we are? Does that make sense?

John:

Yeah, no, and that's honestly like I don't know. It's really cool that I kind of viewed it as this, almost like negative warning, but almost it's this message of kind of turning inward and, like you said, mourning and weeping for our own sin, but that's like the first step in like path towards redemption or healing. And I don't know at least that's how I took it what you were, how you were describing it so I don't know, that was just really cool, cause I, I don't know, I read that part and that part's always like confused me whenever I've heard that, I'm like what is going on here? So I appreciate that

Fr. George:

For sure.

Jessica:

I also like with that line "o not weep. For me, it just reminds me that Jesus never did anything thinking of Himself. He was always thinking of the good of souls, the good of the people in front of him. And I think about myself when I'm suffering sometimes. If I'm being honest, I want the pity. I want people to be like, oh gosh, maybe I could help in some way I mean, as embarrassing as it can be to admit that but Jesus had not an ounce of that Like. He was suffering to a more extreme degree than I have ever suffered and he didn't want any of that attention.

Jessica:

Instead, he would rather exactly what you're saying, john, like have them turn inward and make it about their transformation of their own heart, which I think is really beautiful

Fr. George:

Another thing that comes to me from this particular passage is how I so I was in the Holy land, uh, several years ago, about five, six years ago, and you could walk the path where Jesus carried that cross and it's actually it's not very far, like the path itself is actually not that long, but how long it must've felt like I don't know what it's like for you guys in suffering, but like when suffering comes, it feels like time slows down and it feels like it's going to be forever and like how must have felt for like Jesus in that moment, to like feel like it was it was just a short walk, but it feels, you know, could it have felt like an eternity?

Fr. George:

And it just makes me think again of Jesus being with us in our sufferings. So, when the time seems to slow down and it's long, to invite Jesus into that and to carry the cross with him in that moment, in our own experience of carrying the cross in our own lives.

Jessica:

Beautiful Father George. What stuck out to you?

Fr. George:

I'm oftentimes thinking a lot about the virtue that is connected with the particular mystery, and this one is the virtue of patience, which is probably what all of us ask for all the time is just asking for the grace to be patient.

Fr. George:

And one of the insights I read somewhere about patience is, a lot of times we connect patience, or I connect patience, to anger, like, oh, if you're angry, you need more patience, or I'm angry and I need to just be more patient, and actually patience is a virtue that regulates our sadness, so it's actually so you can still use it in the sense of with anger, like I need to be more patient and be less angry, but actually meekness would be the virtue that helps us with our anger.

Fr. George:

But patience is endurance of sorrow, and an insight that a priest friend of mine told me one time is sometimes, when we're angry, it's actually because there's something that we need to be sad about or there's something that we're grieving, you know, so I think of you know, people.

Fr. George:

We get angry when you know there's chaos and, like you know, people don't do the right thing or drive on the road crazy or whatever, and what we're mourning inside is our inability to have total control of the situation. And how often is that present in our lives when we don't have that control and so we get angry, we get upset. But really what we could do is then relate that to Jesus and ask him for that patience to endure the sorrow and to moderate our sorrow and our sadness. I just think there could be something really beautiful there that Jesus can do in our own hearts that he does in this mystery of continuing to endure, continuing to be patient. You know, there is a sorrow that's in his heart and yet he holds it perfectly and he's that model for us and he's in us in those moments when we need that patience.

Jessica:

Father George, this lack of control that you're speaking into and this way you're describing patience is like blowing my mind right now. I feel like I really needed to receive this. We recently had a family member who was diagnosed with a chronic illness. That has just been really an unexpected thing that John and I have been facing a true sorrowful mystery for us and just trying to make sense of it and how to carry forward with it. And I love this idea of patience as being a way to kind of endure sorrow and that just really made me think about like what am I grieving here? And it honestly, Simon was really sticking out to me in this passage when you were reading it. Earlier, at earlier points, I kind of imagined that Simon. I wanted to see him as like the do-gooder who was like jumping in to be like, oh, I'll help you, Jesus, and I loved imagining Simon doing that. And then it was. I think I went for years thinking that and then at a later point, the way that that verse reads that he was made they made him carry it behind Jesus, like it wasn't Simon's choice to go carry his cross, and that really sticks out to me because, you know, in that situation I described and in others, like sometimes I feel like it wasn't. Maybe I'm carrying a cross that I would have never chosen for myself and just the journey of carrying it and like it's almost like I if I had known beforehand that that was going to happen, versus just being forced to like pick it up and kind of journey with that acceptance as I'm already carrying it. I don't know, simon is just I don't know that I have some real inspirational thing to come out of it, but I just felt very known by Simon in this passage, just carrying something that he wouldn't have chosen for himself and just in that carrying really moving to a spirit of acceptance and it just really makes me reflect on my in my own heart and just really want to pray more for a spirit of acceptance of anything. And if I can imagine that, as like Jesus is also carrying that cross with me, like it's not just me carrying it but Jesus is carrying it too, that helps me definitely a lot.

Jessica:

The other thing that stuck out to me here was in this version that we read we read from the New American Bible, because we deliberately have been choosing to read out of that version, since that's the version that's used at Mass and we like the idea of hearing something on the podcast and there. hearing that reading in Mass and kind of having a connection there. But in another version of the Bible that I like to read, part of that verse said let's see, it was verse 25. And it said but Jesus, he delivered up to their will. So Pilate's delivering Jesus up to the will of the people and I just really think there's something just crazy at play in the passion of God's will versus our will and the way that that version of the Bible so deliberately says Jesus, he delivered up to their will. It just makes me kind of reflect on this big piece that Jesus reveals about the heart of the Father, that the heart of the Father is gentle and humble. And just so crazy to me that God would humble himself to my will, like how he humbled himself to the will of the people even when it was going to cause suffering for himself. And just this idea that God allows himself to be rejected he allows us to sin and to harm ourselves and others and our relationship with him in doing so, but in that he never abandons us, even when our will is like full on rejection of Him, He submits himself to that. And not that he has to, of course, but just like a gentleness and humility toward us is just to me really crazy to think about and I think about too.

Jessica:

Just I one time was speaking with my spiritual director, feeling desperate about someone in my life who I love, who just I just want them so badly to experience the love of Jesus for them and I feel like it could really help them alleviate suffering. And she told me to just pray, to pray for their heart, to kind of have the disposition. Let me think of how I want to say this. If we pray for a person's heart, sometimes that can be the invitation for the Lord to enter, and of course it's up to the will of that person to really let them enter. But our prayer for those people does something, and so I just it's amazing to me to think about just how will is at play here in the Passion. John, father George, any last thoughts here?

John:

No, I loved hearing what both of you guys had to say and that it shed a new perspective on it, for me for sure.

Jessica:

Thank you both so much as always. Thank you also to you all for taking the time to listen and we really hope that this is meaningful for you. Come, holy Spirit, please enter all of our hearts and we promise to keep praying for you and we ask for your continued prayers for us, for the Holy Spirit just to continue to inspire us and for us to continue to receive. Thank you so much. Praise be to God.