Jesus Receives the Cross

Stations of the Cross 2010‏

Reflection by: Elmer Romero

Photo by: Edgar Romero

Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. As bishop Romero said “we are able to feel with the Christ of Holy Week carrying his cross, that the people of Christ also go carrying their cross. We are able to feel in the Christ of the open and crucified arms, the suffering of the crucified people in this world. But from this Christ, that suffers and is humiliated, a crucified and humiliated people see their reflection and find their hope”.

This photo was taken by my brother Edgar Romero in El Salvador and it was gift for my friend Christian Poveda, a photo documentary journalist who was murdered in El Salvador. Christian selected this image as a representation of his own cross and as a well-known theologian and Roman catholic priest, Gustavo Gutierrez, said: “the cross makes us pay special attention to the humanity of Jesus that is nothing but the humanity of God”.

Our close friend Christian was filming a documentary on the most dangerous gangs in El Salvador. He saw many crosses that people are carrying, suffering now such as: mothers still looking for missing daughters and sons even though its been many years since of the end of the civil war; youth are killing each other and crossing borders looking for a better life and a way to support their families; women are fighting against domestic violence and for gender rights and justice.

This image not only represents Jesus or people receiving crosses, but transforming them. The flowers represent that “the Christian hope is not primarily oriented to the cross but the transforming of it, of all of them, because the Crucified one is now the living Resurrected One” in which the crucified of this world can find a voice for justice.

I humbly present this image to the Trinity Episcopal Church in Houston in the memory of the XXX anniversary of the martyrdom of Archbishop Romero and as a recognition that “the cross is not to understand it, but to assume it as a scandal. The cross is a scandal because it is a crime”. May we be so scandalized that we work to tirelessly to transform it so that God’s kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven.