I had to get naked to follow Jesus. No, I don’t mean metaphorically.
At least, not at first.
The rosary beads slipped through my fingers as I entered the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery.
I knew this story, prayed it countless times, and could visualize Jesus stumbling under the weight of the wood.
This time, I wasn’t watching from the sidelines. I was in the center of the following mob.
Bodies pressed in all around me. The crowd was thick. Angry. The air reeked of sweat and bloodlust as men and women hurled shouts and curses. I could see Him on the road ahead. Jesus, bent under the crossbeam, suffering. Bleeding.
Then He looked up. Through the chaos, through the jeering crowd, His eyes found mine. His words followed.
“Christopher—follow me.”
I froze.
This wasn’t a suggestion. Not a gentle nudge. This was a call that demanded everything. And I wanted to answer Him.
No, not wanted.
Needed.
I tried to push through the mass of humanity. Impossible. Bodies were packed tight, pressing closer with each surge of the crowd. I could barely move inches, let alone reach the road where Jesus walked.
Again, His voice: “Christopher—follow me.”
The urgency in His tone was unmistakable. Now or never. Follow or forever wonder what might have been.
But there was no way through the crowd.
Maybe beneath it.
My heart sank as I dropped to my knees. A forest of flesh blocked my path. Legs and feet that shifted every few seconds. But there, between the shifting bodies, I glimpsed a way forward.
I crawled.
Feet stomped on my hands. Nobody heard my cries of pain, or maybe they didn’t care. The crowd pressed even tighter. Openings vanished, reappeared. I managed to squeeze past several people, but then my belt buckle caught on something. A leg. A boot. Maybe a bag. I couldn’t tell in the shadows. All I knew was that my clothes were bunched up, preventing passage through the narrow spaces. My breath hitched. My chest tightened. It was useless. Giving up seemed my only option.
Then Jesus’ voice cut through my despair: “Get rid of anything and everything preventing you from moving forward. Do whatever you must to reach Me.”
In the distance, I heard the decade coming to an end. Only a few Hail Marys remained before the next Mystery would begin.
My fingers fumbled with my sandals, then my belt. With a grunt and tug, my shirt was over my head. I shimmied out of my pants. Everything that identified me, that protected my dignity and made me presentable—it all had to go.
I slithered through the tunnel of legs, naked and vulnerable, my skin scraping against the rough stone. The crowd paid no attention to the man crawling beneath them. They were too focused on the spectacle ahead, too consumed with their own bloodthirsty excitement to notice one desperate soul fighting to reach the road. To reach Him.
Finally, I emerged from the crowd.
Up ahead, bloody footprints marked the path as Jesus continued His march toward Calvary.
Now I had to follow Him.
The vision ended as I prayed the final Hail Mary, but its message lingered. How many times had I tried to follow Him while clinging to the very things that prevented true discipleship?
The crowd in my vision represented more than just the mob that day in Jerusalem. It’s the embodiment of every force in my life keeping me from Christ. Social pressure, cultural expectations, the opinions of others. Sometimes the greatest obstacles to following Jesus aren’t external persecutions but the sheer weight of conformity, the difficulty of swimming against the current of a world moving in the opposite direction.
But the real revelation was this: following Jesus required me to become naked.
Every comfort, every security, every piece of identity I’d wrapped around myself—it all had to go. My reputation, my possessions, my plans, my pride. Even good things that weren’t necessarily sinful but simply got in the way of following Him.
There’s something profoundly humbling about spiritual nakedness. When we strip away everything we think makes us worthy, we discover what the mystics have always known: we come to God with nothing but our desperate need for Him.
It’s the recognition that our diplomas, titles, achievements, carefully curated profiles—even our good works—can become clothing that hinders rather than helps.
The naked soul before God discovers something beautiful: we are loved not for what we wear but for who we are beneath it all. And not for what we accomplish but for how desperately we need His grace.
Jesus Himself walked this path of stripping away. Born in a stable, He owned nothing. At His crucifixion, even His clothes were divided among soldiers. He who was rich became poor so that we, through His poverty, might become rich.
But His riches aren’t the kind we can wear or accumulate. They’re the riches of a relationship so intimate, so transformative, that everything else pales by comparison.
Every day, Jesus extends the same invitation: “Follow me.” And every day, we face the same choice. What will we shed to reach Him?
Sometimes it’s dramatic—missionary work, religious life. More often it’s quieter: vulnerability over self-protection, trust over control.
The crowd still presses in, and the voices of the world will still shout their demands. They always will. But if we listen carefully, we can hear His voice calling our name.
What clothing of comfort, what accessories of approval, what belt is preventing you from squeezing through the narrow spaces toward Him?
The road is rough. At times it can be bloody. But at the end waits the One who loves us enough to call us by name from the crowd.
“Get rid of anything and everything preventing you from reaching me. Do whatever you must to reach me.”
The invitation stands. The choice is ours.
Image from Wikimedia Commons
