III- Jesus Falls the First Time

"STATION III: Jesus falls the first time" by contemplative imaging is marked with CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

We adore you O Christ and we praise you. Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

To be honest, I'm not sure how to meditate on this one. It seems so vague.

I know how devotionals usually do it -- five years of Catholic school managed to drill at least that much into me.

They usually go one of two routes.

The first route is a reflection on sin; on trying to do a thing and sinning and failing and having to keep getting up and trying again. While all that is true as far as it goes, I've never really liked it as a station meditation. We're supposed to be mediating on Christ and His passion, and that one feels a bit more like mediation on the human condition (and the one part of the human condition Christ doesn't share with us, at that).

The second way I've seen it done is a simple description of what that first fall might've looked like. The description usually corresponds with the other two "falling" stations, showing Christ getting weaker and weaker as the ordeal of His passion continues. The other two, particularly the last one, can be gut wrenching, but this one is usually described in relatively mild terms.

I prefer the second way of thinking on it over the first, since it's actually thinking about Christ rather than navel gazing at oneself. It's "seeing" what's going on and entering into it.

That seems to be the point of the stations: to see and meditate on Him for twenty minutes or so. To accompany and to be with Him.

I do think this station, and the other two "fall" stations, are perhaps better expressed in visual rather than written media because they're meant to depict a progression. And as I'm not that good of an artist, here's some visual representations for mediation: