At that moment, he was coming in from the countryside. He happened to be passing by when he unexpectedly found himself caught up in a drama that overwhelmed him, like the heavy wood that was placed on his shoulders.
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/homilies/2025/documents/20250413-omelia-palme.html
This is interesting. In the section below as well, there's the suggestion that those who are accidentally suffering are carrying the cross as well. Having been wandering through a part of the world where different faiths have been trying to vindicate themselves for centuries, you can definitely see certain "types" of society associated with the different faiths and confessions. The notion that those suffering within these societies, say, for example a Christian culture, in an entirely incidental manner--but in a way that would not be occurring if the society was not caught up in the work of social progress, that the suffering is united in a sort of Cyrenian way, even absent consciousness of the specifically Christian character of the difficulty.
Difficulty: does that mean that someone who suffers because an Islamic society is trying to change the world is outside the specifically redemptive suffering?
Imagine two Simons of Cyrene. One knows of Jesus, the other doesn't. The second actually carries the cross. The first carries Dismas' cross, but identifies his difficulty with those of Christ.
Perhaps the answer is that the initial perception of the situation doesn't govern. The Cyrenian didn't know what he was doing when he began to do it, but then perhaps he noticed something. Perhaps the one in a foreign culture who identifies his sufferings with those of Christ comes to understand, by this attempt at understanding, that they're distinct from them. But the disposition is to questioning the difficulty, coming to understand its nature. Not just submitting to the difficulty without willing it, letting the compulsion be determinative. To understand the difficulty, not in a pragmatic sense, but in a teleological sense. The whole point of the exercise is that the nature of the difficulty--as difficulty--ultimately isn't determinative. Its meaning is determinative.