“If anyone wants to follow me, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
On the way of the cross, the Savior is not alone, and he is not only surrounded by enemies who harass him. People who support him are also present: the Mother of God, model for those who, in every time, follow the example of the cross; Simon of Cyrene, a symbol of those who accept a suffering that is imposed on them and who are blessed in that acceptance; and Veronica, an image of those who are pushed by love to serve the Lord. Each person who, throughout time, has carried a heavy destiny while remembering the Savior’s suffering, or who freely performed an act of penance, redeemed a little of humankind’s enormous debt and helped the Lord to carry his burden. And even more, it is Christ, the head of the mystical body, who accomplishes his work of atonement in the members who give themselves with all their being, body and soul, to his work of redemption.
We can assume that the vision of the faithful who would follow him on the path of suffering upheld the Savior in the Garden of Olives. And the support given by those who carried the cross was a help to him each time he fell. It was the righteous of the Old Covenant who accompanied him between his first fall and the second one. The disciples, men and women who rallied around him during his earthly life, were the ones who helped him from the second to the third station. The lovers of the cross, whom he awakened and whom he will continue to awaken throughout the vicissitudes of the struggling Church, are his allies until the end of time. It is to this that we, too, are called.
Ezechiel 3:17-19