„Christ has not stopped dying", says Michael Quoist in one of his prayers.  Christ's way of the cross continues on in all human beings who experience pain and suffering today. "The people who are suffering and dying all around us everyday are always Christ."

The story of Simon of Cyrene, the man who was forced to carry the cross of Jesus part of the way and who through that suffering became a "Christian", places a symbolic form of this mystery before us that we can meditate on again and again.  Later we find his sons in the first Christian congregation.  We can all symbolically carry the cross part of the way for one another.  We can suffer with people and now and then take up a little of their suffering.  That does not always need to be as dramatic as the example of Maximilan Kolbe  who went to his death for another.  Where we take up our cross (which in the New Testament has become the symbol word for all the difficulties in the life of a Christian) and where we place ourselves under the cross of a fellow human being and endure the pain, there we are drawn into the mystery of Jesus. That is the form that is set before us by Simon:  "I with you, for you - you with me, for me".

Matthew 27:32 (" This man they compelled to carry his cross")

- Meditate on John under the cross of Jesus...

- hymn meditation

"I will stay with you here, do not scorn me;
I will not go away from you, when your heart breaks in you
When your head grows faint with the last blow of death
There I will enclose you in my arm and bosom."-   (Paul Gerhardt EG 85,6 )