“He was minding his own business. But he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time…or so it seemed…Luke’s Gospel (Luke 23:26) says that on a certain Friday 2000 years ago, a man named Simon was coming into Jerusalem ‘from the country’…The crowd Simon encountered on that particular Friday – was different. Simon, the man from Cyrene, was stuck in the middle of this strange crowd. The wrong place at the wrong time?” begins Michael Renninger, pastor of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Richmond, Virginia. Then a Roman soldier grabs Simon’s arm and tells him to carry the cross. Renninger continues, “Simon picks up the cross. A cross he did not deserve. A cross that did not belong to him. A cross that made no sense. I suspect that he was probably angry. And frightened. And disappointed. And confused. All at the same time. And then…they started to walk. Simon, and Jesus. Both of them suffering. Both burdened. But both of them kept going, one step at a time.” Wrong place, wrong time or right place, right time?
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