VII. Jesus falls the Second Time
James B. Janknegt

Falls Again

How heavy the weight of sin? - Who can measure it upon a scale?
It slowly adds up, day after day, year after year, millennia upon millennia.
First Eve, then Adam, next Cain and on and on and on and on…
Sin stacking upon sin, piling high and wide and deep.
Pride, murder, lust, greed, deceit, deception, lies, avarice, sloth.
Adultery, gossip, fraud, betrayal, fornication, hate, usury.
Idolatry, idolatry, idolatry, idolatry, idolatry, idolatry.
Higher, deeper, wider, too immense to get over, too enormous to get around.
My step seemed sure, a slip unlikely and yet my lacerated knees
And flesh ripped palms belie a falling, a stumbling.
I, too, add my burden of sin to the already immeasurable pile.
The Carnaval mask is not so easily dislodged by such a fall.
My lust for plastic beads and counterfeit coin rages on.
What a treasure you are brightly colored bauble! How I fight for you!
Don't cajole me with your ashen cross
In a land where every day is Mardi Gras.
Yet the man of sorrows still passes by, unseen, unbidden.
He falls, he falls again. What heaviness bears down upon that cross he carries?
Exactly the onus of each sin: thought, spoken or executed
And every act of love withheld.
Again he rises to bear the weight not for a day but for eternity.
O second Adam, grant us grace in our falling to rise as you have risen
Not to be doubly cast down by sin and shame,
Shame's intent to weld us to the ground.
Strip away our masks, crush guilt, trample shame,
Buoy us up upon the mercy that is wider still.