The Passion of the Christ

In The Passion of the Christ the person I identified with was Simon of Cyrene. A family man, just happened to be there, and then gets roped in, reluctantly, against his will. But then finding himself yoked together with the blood-stained Christ he becomes strong. He encourages Christ. He yells at the soldiers who are mocking and frolicking and treating Christ as something less than a savage wild beast. The soldiers could have killed Simon, but he puts them in their place. And then Simon presses on, shoulder to shoulder with Christ, who cannot make it on his own. At the end, though, the soldiers just shove him back ignominiously into the crowd. But we know that that’s not the end. He became a follower of Christ, and his sons were well known members, maybe pillars, of the church by the time Mark wrote his Gospel. “They compelled a passer-by, who was coming in from the country, to carry his cross; it was Simon of Cyrene, the father of Alexander and Rufus.” Mark 15.21.