Walking the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem with my family last Good Friday felt different, heavier, more personal. The traditional path of Christ’s suffering wasn’t just ancient history; it felt painfully present. It mirrored today’s wounds: people judged without a voice, lives lost to violence, dignity stripped away, families displaced, and deep trauma, all carried like invisible crosses.

 Each station echoed something I’ve seen, felt, or carried this past year.

Station 1: Jesus is condemned to death. It made me think of how quickly people are judged here. Labeled as guilty, threats, criminals, or enemies - without trial, without a voice. Just like Jesus, many are condemned before anyone even sees their humanity.

Station 2: Jesus carries His cross. Not every cross is made of wood. Some are invisible. I saw the invisible burdens so many people carry: the weight of grief, trauma, being displaced and sometimes it is simply staying.

Station 3: Jesus falls for the first time. I felt our collective exhaustion. That kind of collapse that doesn’t come just from pain, but from carrying too much for too long.

Station 4: Jesus meets His mother. I saw Mary in the faces of mothers weeping for children lost to violence. They carry a grief that breaks the heart and a strength that refuses to break.

Station 5: Simon helps carry the cross. I thought of all the brave people, like Simon, who show up to help carry burdens that aren’t theirs. In the family of God, we are called to bear one another’s burdens.

Station 6: Veronica wipes Jesus’ face. This reminded me that not all acts of resistance are loud. Some are as quiet as kindness. As gentle as saying, “I see your pain. I see your humanity.”

Station 7: Jesus falls again. This fall felt heavier. Like the kind that comes when you’re already broken. When getting up seems impossible. But still...He gets up.

Station 8: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. I realized the women are still here. Still weeping, praying, calling for peace even when no one listens. Still carrying the ache with a quiet strength that refuses to let go.

Station 9: Jesus falls a third time. This time, it feels like maybe He won’t get back up. But He does. Even exhausted, even when hope feels impossible, He keeps going. That matters, because this is where redemption begins: right in the struggle, amid suffering.

Station 10: Jesus is stripped of His garments. The war has done that too - taken lives, homes, dignity, sometimes even faith. There’s pain not just in the loss itself, but in how vulnerable it leaves us; laid bare with nothing to shield us. Jesus knows that too.

Station 11: Jesus is nailed to the cross. It's a moment of unbearable pain and humiliation. And yet, even in that agony, He prays, He forgives. Some wounds never fully heal. Some traumas stay and become part of who we are - like the marks of the cross that remained on Jesus after the resurrection.

Station 12: Jesus dies on the cross. The sky goes dark...a sense of collective grief. Jesus entrusts Himself to the Father. Love, poured out completely and the cost of redemption, paid in full.

We call it “Good” Friday not because the pain is good, but because the love is real. Because this suffering wasn’t pointless - it was purposeful. Jesus didn’t just suffer with us, He suffered for us. And that changes everything.

Station 13: Jesus is taken down from the cross. Even in death, someone shows up. To hold the broken. To mourn with dignity. There is sacredness in the sorrow. Mourning is love, too. We don’t skip this part. We sit in it. Because even here, in the stillness and sorrow, God is present. In a year of massive loss of life, this station felt especially heavy - mourning and remembering the lives taken by violence, the bodies never held, and the grief left unspoken and unseen.

Station 14: Jesus is laid in the tomb. And silence. The kind that feels like the end. The kind that sits in hospitals, refugee camps, and graveyards. It’s the ache of despair, the gut-wrenching fear that morning may never come. But it never is. Because even in the tomb, Christ was already defeating death.

And maybe that’s why we’re still here.

Life in this land has long been marked by fear, suffering, and division. As Christians in the Holy Land, we are often overlooked and forgotten in a conflict that rarely sees us or hears us. Many are leaving, not because they’ve lost faith, but because the cost of staying has become too high.

Still, a remnant remains. A small, ancient community rooted deep in this soil, holding fast even as the world seems to pass us by.

Still, we stay.

Because it’s not just that Jesus suffered with us. It’s that He redeems suffering. His death wasn’t just a tragedy; it was a triumph. Through His cross, real peace became possible. Forgiveness, justice, and healing are not just hoped for - they are promised. Because Christ has risen.

Standing at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, watching pilgrims retrace those sacred steps, I remembered why we stay. Not for safety. Not for comfort.

But because this land’s story - of pain and resurrection - is our story too.

In a region so often defined by violence and division, holding onto resurrection hope is a radical act of faith. A daily decision to believe that just peace is still possible. That Sunday still comes.

So yes, the Stations felt heavier this year. But somehow, more alive too. And so does the resurrection.

We walk this painful road not to despair, but to remember that tombs break open. That justice lives. That death, no matter how loud, doesn’t get the last word - because Christ has risen.

We’re called to carry the message of reconciliation. Not a cheap reconciliation, but a costly one; a cross-shaped one.

That’s what I carried home that day. That resurrection isn’t just a twist. It’s the truth. The kind that changes how we suffer and how we hope.