A Reflection on the 10th Station of the Cross

Dr. Derrick Witherington

Assistant Director of Campus Ministries

Loyola University, Chicago

Preached April 11, 2025

What does it mean to follow the Will of God? A loaded question, to be sure, but one which a Christian cannot avoid asking. For many, trying to answer this question becomes something close to an obsession: what does God from me? How am I going to do it? What is the correct way of proceeding?

Thinkers throughout the centuries have tried to come up with answers to these questions. One of the more intriguing answers comes from Christian existentialism which teaches that the “correct” decision when discerning God’s will is, simply, the one we happen to make. If God grounds our life there is no escape from God’s grace, and we should spend less time obsessing about God’s will and simply live into it in our lives. The key to following God, then, is realizing our freedom and beloved children of God and learning to let go of any anxieties or obsessions which make us feel scared that we are anything other than a beloved child of God.

Ignatian spirituality offers a variation on this theme. Here, the key to following God’s will is, likewise, living into our freedom as God’s beloved, but extra emphasis is placed on helping us determine the specific areas in our lives where we are un-free, and held back from loving God and our neighbors as ourselves. Throughout the second week of the Spiritual Exercises, the retreatant is given the tools to do this, and with the help of a spiritual director who helps as a mirror, the retreatant learns to ask God for help in becoming liberated from whatever hinders spiritual freedom. Moving from beyond the Second Week takes a lot of work because usually the things which we discover are holding us back are also some of the things we have deceived ourselves into thinking we need most. Some of these things are obvious like drugs, alcohol, or being addicted to work. Other things are less obvious but just as sinister: spiritually harmful images of God, imposter syndrome fed by a false sense of humility, or various forms of spiritual pride.

When I think of the Tenth Station which commemorates Jesus being stripped of his clothing, I cannot help but thinking of this stage of spiritual development I’ve just described. Rather than just seeing this station as a necessary step on the way to crucifixion – even though it was that too – I think this station also invites us to consider what it means to be stripped of all of the pretentions, narratives, and coping mechanisms we ordinarily use to shield ourselves – consciously or not – from following the Will of God. Jesus not only provides us an example here, but he stands in solidarity with us: just as ridding ourselves of these things is usually a painful process, the removal of his garments, clinging to his fresh open wounds, was also painful. It was only after being stripped in this way that Jesus was prepared to fully embrace the Will of His Father that he suffer death and rise again. The same holds true for us: it is only after we empty ourselves of all of our coping mechanisms for avoiding a wholistic and true experience of God in our lives that we are enabled to embrace God’s will for us wherein various “Good Friday” setbacks are given proper perspective in the light of Easter morning.

And where do we encounter that Light and Presence of Easter in a real way? The Holy Eucharist, Holy Communion where the stripped, crucified, risen and ascended Lord embraces us each time we approach the altar rail. As we prepare to worship Christ in the Eucharist in a few moments, may we all grow in our loving awareness that it is there in the broken, bare, and vulnerable Eucharistic host where all courage, strength and healing is to be found. It is there where we not only find spiritual food for the journey, but the means of truly seeing ourselves as we really are: radically free, radically loved, children of God.