Q: In the account of the Passion of Our Lord, the Gospels say that Simon of Cyrene helped Jesus carry his cross but they don’t say any more about who he was. What else do we know about him?
As you say, the Gospels are very sparing in their reference to Simon of Cyrene. The three Synoptic Gospels tell us that as Jesus was carrying his cross to the place of execution the soldiers forced a man from Cyrene by the name of Simon to carry his cross (cf. Mt 27:32; Mk 15:21; Lk 23:26).
Mark adds that Simon was coming in from the country and that he was the father of Alexander and Rufus. This implies that when Mark wrote his Gospel, some thirty years after the event, Alexander and Rufus were well known to the Christian community, and were undoubtedly Christians themselves. The Christian writer Papias, who died around 130, tells us that Mark wrote his Gospel for the Christian community in Rome. This suggests that Alexander and Rufus were probably part of the Christian congregation in that city.
Indeed, although we cannot be sure that this is the same person, in his letter to the Romans St Paul sends greetings to Rufus, “eminent in the Lord” and also to “his mother and mine” (Rom 16:13).
An Alexander is mentioned in several of St Paul’s writings (cf. Acts 19:33; 1 Tim 1:20; 2 Tim 4:14) but again there is no assurance that this is the son of Simon. Cyrene was a city in North Africa in modern-day Libya. It was founded as a Greek colony in 631 BC and from 96 BC on it was closely tied to Rome.
It obviously had a sizeable Jewish community as evidenced by the fact that among those present in Jerusalem on the day of the Jewish feast of Pentecost was a group of people from Libya around Cyrene (cf. Acts 2:10; also Acts 6:9).
Simon was thus a North African and because of this some have thought he might be black or at least of dark complexion, in which case he might be identified with Simon Niger (the Latin word for black) mentioned in Acts 13:1.
In any case, he was most likely a Hellenistic Jew going to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. He seems to have been entering Jerusalem at the same time as the procession to Calvary was leaving it, so that he is described as coming in from the country.
When it was clear that Jesus was so weak that he could no longer carry the cross, the Roman soldiers decided to act. It was unthinkable that a soldier would carry it, and to ask a local Jew to do it would have stirred up more trouble. So it seemed natural to ask a stranger coming in from the country to carry the cross.
Although we do not know Simon’s attitude at the beginning, and we can expect that he would have felt put out and embarrassed, we do know that some years later Simon’s sons had become Christians, and probably Simon and his wife too. Thus great blessings came to Simon and his family through this encounter. As St Josemaría Escrivá writes, “It all started with this unexpected meeting with the Cross” (The Way of the Cross, Fifth Station). God used a seemingly unfortunate event to bring about the conversion of a family. We too should be willing to be generous and to take up the crosses that come our way unexpectedly.
We never know what God will bring about as a result.