The Seventh Station: Jesus falls for the second time

We trust too often in our own strength.
We believe, too rashly, that we can manage.
It is an arrogance.

Does Jesus feel the same bleak sense of desolation
when he falls again?
He knows too well that this weakness
is capitulation to a human frailty.
No divinity coursing through his veins
Gives his muscles the lift he needs.

He falls
and the dull pain, that comes when one contemplates surrender,
surges over him, envelopes him.

The gladiator, stumbling to his last fight,
the athlete, when the stabbing pain makes defeat seem sweeter than victory,
the patient, succumbing to a terminal disease,
all who taste the bitterness of hopelessness,
the collapse of perseverance,
know that he,
falling for the second time,
shares their despair.

Is there nothing too low for him to stoop to?
Dear God,
to find you, even when your face is ground in the dirt,
is beyond our deserving.

Stations of the Cross