Carrying The Cross at Easter – Fiji Style

Carrying The Cross – A Long Way!

Carrying The Cross is something most Christians are familiar with at Easter time.  Most westerners are used to someone Carrying The Cross a short distance down the church aisle on Good Friday for an re-enactment of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Usually, churches are packed to the rafters during this holiday period and church services are common throughout the Easter long weekend.

But in Fiji, they do it a bit differently.  They Carry The Cross for about 200 kilometres in about a week! And this is a traffic stopper!

The cross is carried from the capital of Fiji, Suva, to Nadi – where the main airport is located for people flying in from overseas.  The cross is transferred from village to village along this route, stopping everything along in it’s way.  One group of people from one village walk along the road, and then it’s given to the next village, and so on. There’s even traffic control engaged throughout the week to make sure the cross gets through to Nadi in time for the Easter Sunday church services!

Villagers then tag along for a walk, forming a very long procession line like this:

Maybe it’s not as headline grabbing as the Philippines version where people are actually physically nailed to a cross (check out this story!), but it’s worth checking out! I would think watching the Filipino version would be pretty close to what happened over two thousand years ago!

I also took some video footage of Carrying The Cross in Fiji which gives you an idea of the scale of this culturally important procession.

Carrying The Cross Video

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRYdSdy56xw[/youtube]

You can read more about the history of religion in Fiji in this book: In God’s Image: The Metaculture of Fijian Christianity.

There you go – Carrying the Cross, Fiji Style!