Daily Journey Through the Great Fast With the Early Churchনমুনা

When Jesus carried His Cross along the “Way of Suffering” (Via Dolorosa) to Golgotha, a “great multitude of the people followed Him, and women who also mourned and lamented Him” [Luke 23:27] but Jesus, looks to these women who are mourning and says to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children.” [Luke 23:28] Jesus teaches us in His response the difference between empathy and sympathy - sympathy is to feel compassion or the hardship that a person is encountering, but empathy is to put yourself in their shoes, as if you were the one going through the hardship they are encountering.

When Jesus commands us to “take up the cross, and follow Me”, He is not asking for our sympathy - He is asking for us toempathizewith Him, to follow in His footsteps, to put ourselves into the hardship He is going through. To sympathize Christ in His sufferings will leave us feeling shallow and empty, barely scratching the surface of a deeper relationship that could be,but to empathize with Christ in His sufferings…that will lead us to the power of His Resurrection.

If we share in His sufferings, we will be glorified with Him, as St. Peter says, “but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.” [1 Peter 4:13]. To follow with Him to death, death of our will, our desires, to die to the world, to die to sin, to lust, to addiction, is to find the power of His Resurrection, which gives us everlasting victory over the former things and an everlasting joy both here in this life and in the next life to come.

“It is a great glory for the believer to bow and carry with his Master His passion, in order that he can get an experimental knowledge with the resurrection power, and its joy into him.” [St. Cyril of Alexandria, 5th century Patriarch of Alexandria, theologian known as the “Pillar of Faith” and a “doctor of the Church”]