One of the ritual practices of the Catholic community on a hushed and sombre Good Friday is to pray before the Stations of the Cross.  These stations are a visual narrative that tell of the Passion and Death of Jesus of Nazareth two thousand years ago.  Painted frescoes, deft geometric shapes wrought in iron, the cool glaze of marble or rough-hewn wooden representations of the suffering of the Lord remind us of the sacrifice made for our salvation.

Each station records Jesus’ agony as he stumbled towards Calvary.  They allow us to see his very human suffering as he was scourged and carried his cross, the crown of thorns jammed onto his head as a mocking symbol of the kingdom of which he preached.  These stations also tell of the people who were with him on that last mortal journey; his mother Mary, the weeping women of Jerusalem and Simon of Cyrene who helped carry the cross.  We see the disciples who cannot stay awake in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Sanhedrin who accuse him of blasphemy, Pilate asking What is truth?

The scriptural basis for one of these stations, the sixth, has not been proven, but long tradition has enshrined a small act of compassion into a hallowed holy story.  In this station, it is Veronica, an ordinary woman in the crowd lining the Via Dolorosa, who takes off her veil to wipe Jesus’ bloodied and bruised face.  It was her immediate heart-wrenching, human response to his pain.  Anne Enright in her Booker winning novel The Gathering writes about this scene that … we have lost the art of public tenderness, these small gestures of wiping and washing.  In Allan Baillie’s short story Only Ten, it is small touch, a squeeze on the forearm, that suggests solidarity and empathy.  It is the refugee child on the playground perimeter whose has experienced war, wounding and loss, who is able to convey compassion to a peer whose sister has been killed.

The power of touch in the clasp of hand, a pat on the shoulder, an embrace, the wiping and washing and dignifying of the broken or old or maimed body, the small tender gesture that says I am with you.

What must Jesus have felt at this woman’s touch?  What did she see in the eyes of this man who had arrived in town to much public jubilation a mere week earlier?  What abandonment there must have been and so much sorrow as the crowd turned on him; this fickle crowd who had feted him as king and now spat at him in derision.

Up at our own St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne, in the circumspect language of the 19th century, Veronica’s veil is described as the holy handkerchief.  Her act of compassion may not have a scriptural foundation, but it is a timeless human story encapsulated in a small sacred moment, a nod to all those immeasurable gestures through the ages that have provide comfort or solace or just enough strength to keep going.  Sometimes simple tenderness towards another human being can unleash a hitherto unknown tensile strength – a resurgence in effort; the bravery and poignancy of the human spirit striving, willing, pushing on against the odds.

In Melbourne’s CBD, the ecumenical walk, The Way of the Cross, occurs on Good Friday.  The route is marked by a series of 14 bronze bas-relief sculptures by Melbourne artist Anna Meszaros.  Here we do not have the Veronica story immortalised.  What we do have are the forgiveness Jesus offers to his tormentors, the promise of Paradise for the good thief and my favourite sculpture, with its omniscient view above Jesus on the cross, where he is seen gazing down at his mother and his beloved disciple.  What we do have on these Good Friday walks is a crowd.  This is a crowd of ordinary believers from different Christian traditions who walk together symbolically as this story is retold.  In The Way of The Cross booklet, Sister Verna Holyhead sgs has written some profound and beautiful words to accompany the scripture and responses.

This contemporary crowd, a colourful cross-section of Melburnians, walks as one along the main streets of our city.  This crowd is very different to the one that turned on Jesus as Barabbas was preferred for release.  This crowd cannot be compared to those who lined the Via Dolorosa revelling in the brutal spectacle of Jesus’ suffering.  It is a motley collection of the human family held together through the connection and constancy of their belief in this story of the man whose cross became a symbol of victory over death.

It is a crowd animated by faith.

The writer Don Senior suggests that the Passion narratives invite the reader to locate his or her place in the cast of characters, who swirl through the drama: the hostile opponents, the betrayer, the terrorised disciples, a leader who denies, the vacillating crowd, the women who stand boldly present at the cross.

This crowd is a strange amorphous creature, part congregation, part audience.  It shapeshifts as people drop off or join or change speed or stop to catch their breath or momentarily flag as they carry a banner.  It has its leaders and followers and a two-hour life of its own.  But in this crowd, there is no vacillation, just grace and good will and steady purpose.  Each small heart beats as part of the whole in walking witness to that ancient story that binds us together.

We, too, wait boldly at the foot of the cross.

By Ann Rennie