FIRST STATION: JESUS IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH.

Have you ever experienced that very nervous period where your entire freedom rests on the capricious decision of one person, and when at last the worst was defined, and all that you have laboured for was gone in an instant?

That ‘all is lost’ period, is what every man, irrespective of class or creed, sooner or later, would have to experience. It is not ‘if ‘, but ‘when’, everything shall fail, and all shall experience that ‘it is finished’ moment called death.

This death is not simply physical, because change and decay become so very experiential. Life itself follows a certain entropy where freedom is often militated against by gravity and friction, because there pervades a certain karma that follows us all.

Death often happens through life. For instance, you burn the midnight oil, you fail; you toil in business, you lose; you labour to make your relationship work, he/she disappoints; you are devoted entirely to children, family and friends; they go. Life cannot be held on to, it’s got to be let go of, and each letting go is a condemnation unto death.

Being condemned, we are faced with a certain limbo of waiting, worsened when the waiting period is undefined. We become a Victim. Life then becomes an endless horizon when one literally becomes a dead man walking and waiting for time and chance to happen. This is tough.  

Life is a judgement, often spiced by the injustice and unfairness of the whole experience. Our ancestors messed things up, and we have also salted the corruption by our ego. The fallacy of the modern man is to think he can handle this vicissitude alone. Boast and the benchmark will simply be raised to crack your pride. Find out from Peter (Mt 26: 31-35). Eni ija o ba lo n pe ara e l’okunrin.

Take up arms and fight the unfair factor like Peter (Mt 26: 51-52) and you can delay your freedom, or not experience it at all. The impossibility of turning the other cheek (Lk 6:29) is meant to speed up that freedom. Just stay low and, stoop to conquer.

This condemnation, and waiting, is a prerequisite of a rebirth to freedom. It is the meaning of Baptism. The proper understanding and appreciation of which is the great Passover. It is an experiential ritual that every cult, esoteric or open, are initiation into, for, life experience itself is the only cult.

It is when this life is lived and experienced to its very depth that an everlasting freedom in its very summit can be derived, and it is only the Christ Jesus who alone has gone to the utmost depth of this death, body and blood, soul and divinity, and have come out of it alive through the Resurrection!

Listen deep within you and you will hear a sure whisper: ‘leave it with me’. At this point of loss take courage, look beyond the horizon and re-imagine, it’s all going to make sense soon.

Live the life of Christ, for, though Him, this experiential condemnation, that moment, when you must surrender everything - willingly or unwillingly- will be the commencement of wisdom and another life in its utmost zenith.