By: Mauro Russo
Editor’s Note: Articles originally published on Pane Vivo.
A Reflection on Matthew 16:21-27
Taking up one’s cross and following Christ: this phrase from Matthew 16:24 is one we all know. But there is something that comes before it in the text that we often skip past too quickly. Something that struck me differently this time.
“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things, be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Mt 16:21).
Jesus admits his burden. Openly. In front of his own. He says it, does not hide it, does not pretend. He, the Messiah, the one on whom everyone has placed the hopes of a revolution, says: I will suffer. I will be arrested. I will die.
How hard it is to do something like that.
The Weight We Do Not Speak
Most of us, when we carry a burden in our heart, avoid talking about it. The very thought generates anxiety. We are conditioned to believe that a burden must be managed, carried or resolved on our own. And there is also another reason, more subtle: we are not inclined to listen to the weight of others. Life brings enough troubles already. The last thing we need is to think about someone else’s.
And that is exactly the logic Peter expresses when he hears Jesus speak of the Passion. “This shall never happen to you” (Mt 16:22). It is not cruelty. It is the most natural human response in the face of another’s pain: let it go, this is not the right path, it cannot be, listen to me.
And Jesus rebukes him. Not because Peter is wicked. But because that logic, that voice that says avoid the pain, dodge the cross, find another way, does not come from God. It comes from the way the world has learned to survive.
Jesus broke that rule. He said his burden out loud. And despite the crucifixion, indeed through it, he became the person, the subject, the purpose around which all of humanity turns. Weakness admitted, walked through, lived, became strength for himself and for everyone else.
Simon of Cyrene and the Shared Cross
I often think about the scene of the walk to Calvary. And I imagine it the other way round from how we usually see it.
It is not Jesus struggling to carry the cross and Simon of Cyrene helping him. It is Jesus who, along that road, is carrying our anguish, our fears, our sins on his shoulders. Simon arrives halfway, compelled, perhaps without fully understanding what is happening. But he too ends up carrying that cross. Caught up in something greater than himself.
As if to say: I am carrying this cross. But you, even with less effort, must stay with me. Not because I need you to. But because only those who have walked under a weight know what it means to meet someone else who is falling. Only those who have lived through pain stop looking away when they see it in someone else’s eyes.
And the future? Do not think about the future. I will be nailed to it for you.
And it is there that the message of sharing, both in pain and in joy, becomes the heart of Christian life. Shared pain becomes more bearable. Let us not look away. Let us not be ashamed of it. Pain is part of life, and life, as a gift from God, is meant to be lived with his help and with that of his Church, which is all of us.
Jesus does not ask us to eliminate the burden. He asks us to walk with him under that burden. And the difference between carrying it alone and carrying it with him is the difference between falling and moving forward.
Take up your cross. Not alone. With him beside you.
Related Links
When God Writes Straight on Crooked Lines
Get Behind Me, Satan: Why Does Jesus Rebuke Peter?
