Simon of Cyrene shows us how to carry the cross we didn’t choose

Gerald Boersma• April 18, 2025

On Good Friday the Church puts the figure of Simon of Cyrene before our mind’s eye. The Fifth Station of the Cross invites us to contemplate Simon and his uncomfortable burden; perhaps this is the only time of the year that we think about him. Along the via dolorosa divine providence saw fit to offer Simon a special role in the Passion. He accompanied Christ in His agony, helping Him to bear the weight of the Cross.

The blood of Jesus, already smeared on the wood, surely rubbed itself on Simon’s back. Simon saw Christ’s mangled body limping towards Golgotha; presumably he saw the Crucifixion, too. Did this experience change him? Was he numbered among the earliest disciples? I like to think so. Why, after all, do all three synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – tell us the name of this inconspicuous figure pulled off the street, seemingly at random, by the Roman guards? In fact, each Gospel tells us something distinct about him.

First, St Matthew recounts that “as they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name: him they compelled to bear His Cross” (27:32). The verb “compel” (ἀγγαρεύω) is the same verb Matthew uses in the Beatitudes when Jesus says: “If anyone ‘compels’ you to go one mile, go with them two miles” (5:41). The Greek verb means “to press, force, or demand another to go somewhere, or carry some burden”. Roman law permitted garrisoned soldiers to conscript aid from the local population, demanding that their subjects carry goods for the soldiers for up to a mile.

It is in this context that Jesus teaches his disciples to love their oppressing enemies even beyond the strict demands of the law: “Go with them two miles,” He says. Perhaps it was according to this Roman law that Simon of Cyrene was conscripted. In any case, the verb Matthew chooses in his Beatitudes to express the love Christ’s disciples ought to show their enemies reappears on the road to Golgotha. When “compelled” by the Roman soldiers to carry the Cross, Simon lives out the action mandated in the Beatitudes.

It is not pleasant to be “compelled” to do something. Simon was not out looking to lend a hand -certainly not to the Romans, but also not to Jesus. Perhaps this is what Matthew is trying to teach us through Simon of Cyrene. Usually we don’t pick our cross; it is thrust upon us. Often, we are simply “compelled” to carry it. But by embracing the cross which we are “compelled” to bear, we can share in Christ’s suffering as He gives us the strength to go the extra mile.

Secondly, St Mark writes that “they compelled a passer-by, Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus” (15:21). Only Mark chronicles this extra familial detail, namely the names of Simon’s children. Tradition holds Alexander and Rufus to have been significant missionary figures in the early Church. On the Day of Pentecost, we read that “people from Cyrene” were present. Did they include Simon and his sons? Later, in Acts, we read that Cyreneian Christians fled Jerusalem after the martyrdom of Stephen. They headed for Antioch to preach Christ there instead (Acts 13:1). Were Simon, Alexander and Rufus among the early Cyreneian missionaries at Antioch?

Consider the tantalizing reference in St Paul’s Letter to the Romans: “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well” (Romans 16:13). Does this refer to Simon’s wife and son? It pleases me to think so. After all, family life is the ordinary way in which Christ is handed on. The home is the first site of evangelical witness and catechesis.

Did Simon’s immediacy to the Passion and his (possible) presence at Pentecost reconstitute his family life? Did he tell his wife about his encounter with Christ on the road to Calvary? Is the early domestic church of Simon and his wife the source of the apostolic missionary activity of their sons, Alexander and Rufus? When Paul writes that Rufus’s mother had been as “a mother to me as well” is he referring to the space that Simon and his wife had made in their home to support Paul’s apostolic endeavors? Again, it pleases me to think so.

Thirdly, St Luke tells us that “as they led Him away, they seized one Simon of Cyrene, who was coming in from the country, and laid on him the Cross, to carry it behind Jesus” (23:26). As we might expect from Luke, we get a more detailed rendering of the scene. Simon is placed in an ordered entourage; he is described as carrying the Cross after Jesus (ὄπισθεν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ). Why does Luke provide the little detail that Simon is following behind Jesus? Well, that detail serves to hold up Simon of Cyrene as the quintessential Lukan disciple.

Simon lives out the call of Christian discipleship as defined twice before in Luke’s Gospel. In Chapter 9 Luke relates Jesus’s words: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me [ἀκολουθείτω μοι]” (9:23). And, in Chapter 14: “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me [ὀπίσω μου], cannot be my disciple” (14:27). To “follow behind” and to “come after” Jesus carrying the Cross is, for Luke, the fundamental posture of Christian discipleship. And, it is this instruction – which we hear with fresh urgency every Lent – that Luke pointedly tells us Simon embraced.

Each synoptic Gospel teaches us something distinct about Simon of Cyrene, who looks out at us today. First, how to respond well when “compelled” to carry our own cross; secondly, that our encounter with Jesus can reconstitute our family life, the domestic church, into a launching pad for apostolic, missionary activity. Finally, Simon models what it means to be a Christian disciple, namely one who, bearing his cross, “follows behind” Jesus.

Gerald Boersma is Professor of Theology at Ave Maria University and Humboldt Fellow at the University of Tübingen

Photo: Jesus is helped by Simon of Cyrene to carry his cross in church of St. James Spanish Place by M. Jacob (1873).