Tuesday, March 24, 2026
Seventh Station of the Cross
Jesus Falls for the Second Time
I’d like to share a personal story.
In my mid-twenties I encountered anxiety. At the beginning of the second year of my graduate program, I was completely crippled. My mom jumped on the next flight to Chicago, and with her guidance, we quickly found professional help in the form of a therapist who worked with me to understand my mind, understand anxiety, and make sense of things.
After a few months, life felt smooth again. I graduated from my masters program, began teaching, and furthered my career as an announcer and as a coach. Life was good!
A few years later, August hit, the school year was coming again… and it all started coming back. The sleepless nights. The pit in my stomach. The anxiety attacks.
I was falling again.
I called mom. She got on the next flight, again. We found a therapist, again. And I felt even worse than I did the first time. Because this wasn’t supposed to happen… again. I was supposed to be fixed. I was supposed to be cured. This was supposed to be behind me.
I was sitting alone in my apartment, on the phone with my friend Nicole, when she delivered precisely the right message at precisely the right moment: “This is not a step backwards. Recognizing that you need help, and knowing exactly where to get it… this is a step forward. This is part of the journey. This is part of healing.”
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I believe that so many of us have been on these journeys. Our journeys are unique. Our stories are our own. But I am confident that you have stories like this too. And I would bet that you have had friends like Nicole, and family members like my Mom, and people like Simon, who carried your cross with you.
We fall. And we fall a second time.
Jesus’s journey along Calvary - an incredibly painful journey, the ultimate journey of love - is a reminder that sometimes we fall. And sometimes we fall a second time. And sometimes a third fall is coming.
This is part of the journey. And I believe it is a journey of love, if we choose it to be.
Jesus, let us choose a journey of love. We know we will fall, as you did. We know we will fall a second time, as you did. And probably more falls are coming.
Our prayer is that you give us friends like Simon, caregivers like Veronica, family like Mary, and the perseverance to get up again, and get up again, and get up again.
Our prayer is that this may be a journey of love.