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Monday, April 04, 2005
Good Friday at Malasag
By Danilo V. Adorador III
(Conclusion)
HELP is always there at times when we need it most. The Lord always makes a way, "where there seems to be no way," as the song goes.
He may send people to bail us out from a miserable situation or directly intervene through his time-tested miracle, He never run out of methods. Yet sometimes, when our individual cross gets heavy, we tend to forget that He is always there to wipe out our faces as the tears trickle down our eyes, to console us like Mary did.
We even at times refuse to let Him carry our cross when He offered to do so. Approaching the next three cross, the road ascended again to a narrow pavement where a deep ravine dotted with yellow trees waiting below.
Any drunk or careless individual could fall into waiting trees and boulders underneath.
The word "fall," I surmised just then, is akin to almost anything disaster but love (the love aspect is debatable, of course).
Whether falling for a temptation, falling to a deadly trap, or literally falling from atop, the end is always the same: destruction.
The seventh cross marks Christ's second fall. Here, by falling the second time around, Christ preached His eternal mercy for mankind.
Christ' second fall did not divert His course at all, it did not changed anything: His direction remained focused to the victorious Calvary. Man may fall the second or third time around, but the Grace of God is ever flowing.
In fact, the Lord fell on his knees for the third time around, marking the ninth cross (Christ third fall) just after He met a multitude of women crying for Him (The eight cross - the encounter with the women of Jerusalem). Again, it never altered His way to the Cross. When I fall, I sometimes alter course, backslide and lose focus, stricken and overwhelmed with guilt. If you fall, got up and fall again, would you emulate Christ by standing and remain steadfast until you reach your goal? The answer is yours.
As I near the summit, exhaustion again visited me. This time, I took time to rest. I stop at intervals to catch my breath then proceeded again. Life is most trying as you get nearer to the top, I was once told. The most unwise thing to do at this point is to go back, and surprisingly there are people whom I know who retreated just when they start smelling success. Understandably, the pressure of gravity is stronger at the top. The next three stations I passed by marked Christ's pain and shame: The tenth cross: Jesus being stripped of his garments; The eleventh cross: The crucifixion.
Christ can summon his Angels to rescue Him out of these painful and shameful situations. He did not. If pain and shame besets us, it's amazing how fast we are to renege from our Christian contract and run somewhere else.
At this point, I'm down with only three stations and passing upon those cross I realized that they all depict the grim truth of life: death. The twelfth cross: Jesus' death; The Thirteenth Cross: Jesus' removal from the cross; and the Fourteenth Cross: the burial of Jesus.
Christ's death is just the beginning of everything. His resurrection is the consummation of the salvation promised by God.
As a young adult who much enjoys life, death is just too unbearable for me to think. It's an impossible prospect. Imagine, shut off forever from the world of hedonistic indulgence. Dead. The End. Period. No more parties, fun, all the worldly things I could possibly savor.
But by literally dying in the Cross, Jesus showed us that there are far more joyous moments in the afterlife that the present things can't possibly equal. His death is just a prelude to something greater, to something "big", some would say. That by dying, he has showed the desperate that there is still hope; that the damned can still be reunited with Him in His glory by repentance and faith.
Did you arise and unite with Him in His resurrection during the Easter Sunday?
Of course it did not take me four hours to reach the last cross atop Malasag. And it did not take Jesus even one minute to decide to die on the cross for you.
(April 4, 2005 issue)
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