Sometimes after the stations I would join my classmates at a function
of the public school we attended. They would ask me where
I had been. “Church,” I would tell them. They would look at me
in unbelief. In my young and very fertile imagination, I thought
of them as the angry crowd surrounding Jesus during his Passion.
Why should my being at church cause them such discomfort?
But it did.
I realize now that the simple devotion that I participated in
throughout my youth taught me a lesson that my friends did not
receive: Failure and suffering are a part of every life. Seen through
the Passion of Christ, they can be a part of God’s plan for us.
