Are you willing to walk His way?

During the Easter Week (April 6 to 12), Bonifacio High Street was bustling with activity. A group of young, zealous Christians was busy putting up (on the mall grounds) 14 interactive stations that were based on the gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It was a modern and creative interpretation of the age-old Christian tradition of the 14 Stations of the Cross to hopefully bring fresh insight into the events that surrounded Christ’s death and resurrection. They called their project Walk Way: Reflections on the Stations of the Cross.

This group is composed of Christians from different churches who believe that everyone, from the staunchest Christian to the most steadfast atheist, is on a spiritual journey and that the essence of church should simply be people deciding to take that journey together. Their simple mission was to help each other take the next step into the journey towards Jesus. They call themselves Church Simplified and they started their journey as a group on Nov. 14, 2007. The group is increasing in number as more and more people of all ages are joining them to take their own spiritual journeys.

Upon the invitation of a nephew who belongs to this group, my family and I went to the Walk Way not knowing what to expect. While we went from one station to the next, reading the reflections on the tall wooden blackboards and doing the suggested interactive measures, I knew that all of us were going through a gamut of emotions, ranging from extreme guilt for continuously committing sin, to heart-rending compassion for the sufferings of Christ, to hatred for the bad people who wanted Christ crucified, and love for God’s supreme sacrifice.

The station that hit us the most was the 7th Station, where Jesus started to carry His cross. (Fact: The Via Dolorosa, Latin for Way of Grief, is a street in the old city of Jerusalem. Jesus walked this path starting from Pilate’s Hall to the Place of the Skulls). There were wooden crosses for the faithful to try to carry and each one weighed 230 lbs. Jesus’ cross weighed 300 lbs. and was much wider. My brother-in-law was the only brave one among us who took a few steps with the cross. The rest of us tried to rest it on our shoulders but could not withstand the heavy weight!  Trying to carry the cross and having an idea of how much it weighed truly changed our whole perspective of Jesus’ Passion. We realized that no amount of reflection, meditation, and study about the passion can make us fathom the depth of Jesus’ sorrow and the physical suffering that He had to endure to save mankind from eternal damnation. From the time He was in the Garden of Gethsemane praying to the Father, to His crucifixion, and death, Jesus’ suffering incomprehensible. The Bible says that Jesus experienced hematidrosis when He was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane (Luke 22:44).

Wikipedia says that hematidrosis is a very rare condition wherein a person sweats blood from suffering extreme levels of stress.

In His time, crucifixion was such a gruesome form of execution that it was reserved for the worst kind of criminals. (Reading this made me so teary-eyed and filled me with hatred for those evil people who put Christ on the level of the worst criminals!) The crucified person dies from suffocation because the intense pain prevents him from breathing. I can imagine how many lives this project has changed for the better. I was so touched that I wanted to share it with some friends whom I brought there the next day. I did all 14 Stations one more time and experienced even stronger feelings than the day before. I decided I wanted to meet the brilliant minds who conceptualized this project. They gave me these words of wisdom that explained their mission.

“Two thousand years ago, on a hill on the outskirts of Palestine, history was marked by an event so powerful that it changed the world. To some, the event did nothing more than mark time. But to millions all over the world, it was the epicenter of God’s demonstration of unconditional love for humanity. The event: the death and resurrection of God’s only Son. Jesus the Christ.”