MEDITATIONS
We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee,
because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.
Throughout Lent, and at other times in the liturgical kalendar, the Church traditionally follows in the steps of our Lord in the Way of the Cross, sometimes known as the Way of Sorrow, or the Via Dolorosa. As we walk through the winding streets of Jerusalem in ancient Palestine, pausing occasionally to reflect on a spiritual truth, we pause to think not only about our Lord, but also about the bystanders and the particular circumstances of each of these stations. We focus on the ordinary men and women who were there to witness the spectacle of this sometime religious leader, now condemned to Roman execution as a common criminal. Often, we who meditate on the Stations of the Cross use this practice to reflect on our Lord's Passion as he walked this road to his death. But it is also important to become one with the bystanders, those who stood on the sidelines, watching this drama unfold before them. The Way of the Cross is the royal way of the Church, the path that leads to resurrection. Each of us, in order to take up our cross, must seek to understand what it was like for our Lord to take up His cross -- by placing ourselves on those same city streets -- as spectators, and as participants -- taking in the spectacle of this humiliating procession. |
The First Station:
Jesus is Condemned to Death
Most of us regard our Lord's condemnation as far something beyond our responsibility. In our mind's eye, we view the Jewish and Roman authorities -- the Church and State -- cooperating together to accuse and condemn our Lord. We pass the blame off on the ancient institutions of Church and State, working as one to accomplish the unthinkable, even the impossible: the death of God. It's very convenient to have institutions, non-personal entities on which we can place all manner of blame. We are always careful to maintain a distance between our "autonomous" individual personality and these institutions that provide an escape from individual responsibility. We forget that the crowd, which gathered outside of the Roman governor's house, was made up of individual voices, as they responded in chorus to Pilate's question. They were as responsible as the authorities for the death of our Lord. Only five days earlier, they had welcomed this man as their Saviour, the one who would save them from the Roman oppressors. But He hadn't lived up to their expectations. The God who broke into their reality was not the God they wanted, and so in their ignorance and arrogance, they tried to kill Him. How often does the God who reveals Himself to us through Scripture, through the Sacraments, through worship, through others, not resemble the God we have imagined; and in response, we join our voice with the crowd: "Crucify Him."
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The Second Station:
Jesus takes up His Cross
How ironic that Jesus of Nazareth, trained
as a carpenter, should carry once again a beam of heavy wood,
not for the purposes of constructing something earthly, but
rather, to construct something heavenly, to build a bridge
between heaven and earth. Little did the woodworker who fashioned
those two wood beams realize they would become the means of
our salvation. To him, as to all Jews, the cross was anathema,
cursed. But God desired to use that lowly instrument of execution
as the vehicle of our redemption. The woodworker who hewed
and planed the wood didn't know that. The crowd who watched
as our Lord, whipped and bleeding, struggling under its weight
didn't know that. But God, whose nature it is to exalt the
things we esteem the least, intended the cross should redeem
all mankind. So it is with us. God intends that we -- who
of our free will -- became cursed because of our sin, should
become partakers of His very nature. Man, who has distinguished
his race by murder, war, violence and oppression, has no understanding
of his true purpose in life. A reading of the daily papers
confirms this fact. However, God planned from the beginning
of time to make it possible to lift us out of our fallen state
and raise us up to the status of Sonship, joint-heirs with
His only Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. That is God's intention
for us, to redeem our hopeless state, for that is His very
nature. |
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The Third Station:
Jesus Falls the First Time
As our Lord stumbled through the narrow streets of Jerusalem, weakened by the loss of blood, and the constant beating by the soldiers, the crowds came out to watch this spectacle. He who had ridden through the city gate on the foal of an ass through the triumphant waving of palms, was now barely able to walk on His own, weighed down by the weight of the cross. What a hollow victory for this one-time King of the Jews, what an empty reception the Palm Sunday procession turned out to be. The cross on His shoulders presses down with the weight of the whole universe. However, on closer examination, it wasn't the cross but rather the weight of the fallen universe that caused Him to stumble. That same universe had been created by a loving God as an expression of His nature -- the love of the Divine Trinity flowing out of Himself, creating a home in which all manner of life would flourish. But now, because of the sin of Adam, that home turned on its own Creator, pressing down on Him, causing Him to fall onto its cold, hard, unforgiving ground. But instead of cursing the universe, the new Adam's fall even then transformed the universe, a healing transformation that would finally be realized at the end of time. Until then, the creation, touched by the healing presence of its Creator, groans, waiting and longing for its final transformation. |
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The Fourth Station:
Jesus Meets His Mother
As our Lord rises from His fall, and struggles to regain His balance, His eyes filled with the strain of concentration, discovers a familiar face; the face of His Mother. Of course she would have been there, somewhere along the way that wound through those city streets. And now, here she was; the one who had always said yes to God, unconditionally; the one who had demonstrated the strength to persevere in the most difficult of circumstances: pregnant though unmarried, giving birth under the worst of conditions in a draughty stable, fleeing in the dead of night into a foreign land to save her child's life. His Mother, who taught Him about love and life, who raised Him in the teachings of the Torah, who supported and cared for Him, not only when He was a child but also at the wedding feast at Cana; "Do whatever He tells you", she tells the servants. Our Lord's response to a comment about His Mother at a much later point in time is recorded in S. Luke's gospel: "Blessed is the one who hears the Word of God and keeps it." Who could our Lord have meant but His Blessed Mother. And now, here she was, at His side, once again to give her support and to care for Him, when He needed it most. Imagine all that was imparted in the silent interchange between Mother and Son. Imagine the onlookers who witnessed the unspoken but clearly intelligible exchange. Imagine the crowd growing silent out of that encounter. |
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The Fifth Station:
The Cyrenian Helps Jesus
Our Lord is fully prepared to carry His own cross. The evangelists make that point clear, each in their own way. S. Luke records that as Jesus was finishing His ministry in the surrounding countryside just before His triumphal entry into the Holy City, He "set His face towards Jerusalem". Our Lord firmly resolved to enter that city knowing full well what was to befall Him. He knew sinful humanity could not abide the perfect One in their midst. He knew they would only try the impossible: to kill God. He was prepared for all that was to happen to Him within the space of one short week. It was no coincidence that when He was arrested, He was in the garden praying. That intimate communion with His Father had given Him the necessary spiritual strength to trust in His Father completely. But now, on His final journey through Jerusalem, His human strength was running out. He could no longer carry the weight of the cross, as well as the oppressive weight of our sin, expressed in our complete and total abandonment. Where were His disciples now? Was there no friend who would step forward and take this burden from Him? At last the soldiers, exasperated with our Lord's inability to carry the cross, realizing that continued beating and whipping would only make matters worse. Grabbing a complete stranger who had stopped only long enough to satisfy his curiosity, they forced him to carry our Lord's cross. |
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The Sixth Station:
Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus
Throughout the earthly ministry of our Lord there were women who ministered to Him. There was the woman who gave Him a drink of water at the well, there was Martha and her sister Mary, there was Mary Magdalene who anointed His feet with perfume. Now, nearly at the end of His earthly ministry, there is Veronica. As our Lord passes by on His way to Calvary, she removes her head-cloth and lovingly offers it to our Lord who wipes the blood and sweat off of His face. He returns the cloth to her, with His image imprinted upon it. Tradition says this was the same woman with the issue of blood who touched the hem of his garment. No longer the anonymous woman who once was unable to ask our Lord for healing face to face, she breaks rank with the crowd and comes to Him to minister to Him. Even to His death, our Lord reveals the proper relationship of man to woman -- not self-sufficient domination, but vulnerability, knowing who He was, firmly grounded in His self-identity as the Son of the Father. In His complete vulnerability, He understood what it meant to give up His life -- willfully and willingly -- not only for this woman but for everyone. In response, Veronica receives Christ to herself, and becomes a bearer of His image. We too need to make this discovery. As we open ourselves to Christ, as we become vulnerable in response to the vulnerability our Lord initiates, we will become bearers of His image to others. |
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The Seventh Station:
Jesus Falls the Second Time
Our Lord, continuing to stagger even though now the weight of the cross had been lifted from His shoulders, stumbles and falls a second time. There was no one who would come forward to help Him stand upright and lead Him down the road to His death, and so He stumbles and falls to the ground. If we had any doubt about the tremendous weight He was carrying in addition to the cross, this second fall reveals the true nature of His burden. The weight of our sin -- mine and yours -- on Him who knew no sin, was more than He could bear. What a picture of complete abandonment. Where were all the people He had healed; weak men made strong, broken men made whole by the touch of our Lord. No one came out of the crowds, no one offered Him a helping hand after He had held out His hand to so many. But our Lord knew He had to walk this path alone, only He out of all the men who had ever lived was able to take this road as the new Adam, the road that led to one end: the giving up of His life for the life of another. Had the first Adam lived up to his vocation, and offered his life for the transgression of Eve, the second Adam would never have had to take this course. Things would have been different. But the first Adam failed. When the first Adam abdicated his vocation as a man, he initiated the path of sin and death that has extended all the way to our own day. Only the second Adam, the perfect Man, could restore the nature of man, and no one could assist Him in that work. And so He fell, but He got back up on His feet, and once again, began down that path. |
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The Eighth Station:
Jesus Comforts the Daughters of Jerusalem
Our Lord is not afraid to be comforted and ministered to by women. We understand that clearly in the way He responds to His Mother and to the Blessed Veronica. But just as He is leaving the city gates of Jerusalem He encounters the women who had gathered there to weep and lament over His death. Perhaps surprisingly, He admonishes them for their response: "Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children." Our Lord knew the difference between sorrow and sentimental attachment, between true contrition and melodramatic outbursts. These women had apparently missed the point. They turned out on this occasion to do their duty, perhaps even as professional mourners. Previous encounters with our Lord had not led to true conversion, and our Lord realized this to be the case. But He doesn't pass them by without giving them yet one more opportunity to come to see who He is, in order that they might come to see their own need. That is what any genuine encounter with our Lord is all about. Once we catch sight of who He actually is, the Son of God Incarnate, we also discover who we are, and realize how destitute and helpless we are standing before Him. But in that encounter, our Lord reaches out to us, to take us to Himself, to be our Advocate and Mediator before His Father. Our part is simply to respond, to say "yes", to accept what our Lord has done for us. This is not mere sentimentality, for it involves the whole self. |
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The Ninth Station:
Jesus Falls the Third Time
Outside the walls of Jerusalem, with the site of his imminent crucifixion, Mount Calvary, in view, our Lord falls a third time. Kneeling on the ground, His eyes glance down at the Holy City, and He remembers one other time when He had looked down at this city: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, killing the prophets and stoning those who are sent to you! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!" Our Lord's heart broken again, He sees this community of man which has rejected its architect, its foundation, its very life itself by rejecting Him. As He looks down on Jerusalem, He sees only a city, having once been built around God's dwelling place among men, the Temple. The City having ejected Him, and cast Him outside of the walls, they are not aware that they have also ejected the True Temple from their midst. For His one bloody sacrifice on that Holy Mount will soon replace the countless sacrifices offered in their Temple since the time of Solomon. Their attempt to purge their Holy City of this Man, has led to His perfect offering of Himself as both Priest and Victim outside of their beloved city for all to see. Their rejection of Him has left only this option: that God should replace the Temple as the meeting place of man and God with the cross. Of course, we still have the option of rejecting the cross, but then we will be as empty as that once holy City became that day. |
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The Tenth Station:
The Stripping of His Garments
The last vestiges of a former tasteful modesty prevent us from understanding the true picture of this episode. Our paintings, our crucifixes depict our Lord on the cross with a loosely wrapped garment around His waist. This was not the case. When our Lord was stripped of His garments, there was nothing modest about it, the soldiers were not in any sense tasteful. He was completely exposed for all passers-by to ridicule. His hands bound, the crown of thorns his only apparel, he stood before the entire universe completely naked. There are no coverings made from leaves that the first Adam wore; here stands Man absolutely vulnerable, absolutely exposed before creation and before His Father; the perfect Sacrifice. All who looked on Him had a choice. They could either ridicule Him or they could see in Him themselves. For in this new Adam, standing naked before the world, is the true picture of each one of us. Before God, there is nothing we can hide behind, nothing that can cover over our true nature. We become the more ridiculous in our futile attempts to clothe ourselves in anything other than the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. For He and He alone can stand before the Father completely exposed, completely unashamed. |
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The Eleventh Station:
Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
When the soldiers nailed our Lord to the hard wood of the cross, they first placed the cross on the ground and then laid him down upon it to drive the nails securely through His flesh. It was as if they were making a desperate attempt to once and for all nail our Lord to the earth. But they didn't know who He truly was. When they raised the cross high into the air, and forced it into the hole they had dug, they unwittingly created an everlasting bridge between Heaven and earth; a bridge that would extend through all time and beyond, into the reaches of eternity itself. That humble cross placed on a hill outside of Jerusalem almost 2000 years ago would become the fount of God's inexhaustible love for man throughout the entire world, throughout all time. And so our Lord with His arms extended in love to all who dared look upon Him offered His life to His Father in Heaven. Here was the intersection of Heaven and earth; here was the place that was created to become the center of the universe, the source of eternal life. Out of His side flowed the waters of Holy Baptism, washing away the sins of all who come to this eternal Font. Out of His side flowed His most precious Blood, the sustenance of all who kneel before Him at this eternal Altar; those sacred wounds in which we find our salvation, that sacred Passion in which we find our strength. |
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The Twelfth Station:
Jesus Dies on the Cross
Alone, naked, nailed to cross, suspended between Heaven and earth, our Lord cries out: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me!" Then breathing His last breath of life, our Lord bowed His head and died. Man has turned his back on Him; now even His Father in Heaven has turned to look away. And so it was that in the absolute rejection by man and in the profound renunciation by His Father unity between the two was restored. This paradox should not confound us, for paradox is at the heart of the Christian religion. Finite man will never comprehend the infinite love of God for us. We may not be able to comprehend so great a mystery, but we are able to witness this love which prompted God to take our nature to Himself and die so cruel a death. Our Lord's death on the cross is a living testament of God's love for us. His complete trust in His Father allowed Him to willingly give up His life. No, it wasn't taken from Him, He gave it up. Even when He sensed that profound absence of His Father's presence, He still trusted His Father enough to let go of His life. There was no struggle, no sudden change of mind, no desperate attempt to hang on to what little life He had left. He gave up His spirit, trusting His Father for what was to come. |
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The Thirteenth Station:
Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross
Our first encounter with our Lord's Mother in the Gospels is at the very beginning of our Lord's life, when He was conceived. Our last encounter with the Blessed Virgin in the Gospels is at our Lord's death, when He is crucified. Standing at the foot of the cross, experiencing Simeon's prophecy told her so long ago she had almost forgotten it, "And a sword shall pierce through your own soul also." Completely and utterly helpless, she had watched her Son die. And now, she stayed as they let down the cross and wrenched His body from its beams. Too numb to respond, she simply took His head into her bosom and broke down and wept. She didn't realize that her unconditional "yes" to God would lead to this. The same womb that bore her Son kicking and screaming as a new-born babe was now the repository for that same Son, now motionless and lifeless. But she accepted this too, as she accepted the consequences of that "yes" to God that changed the world, which now seemed so long ago. When the Blessed Virgin Mary said "yes" to God at the beginning, she understood that the same "yes" would have to be said again and again. One doesn't say "yes" to God just once. Every moment of life contains within itself a choice, and we must choose to say "yes" to God, or "yes" to ourselves. Not to choose is only to choose "no". But to say "yes" is to take us on a journey, on Mary's journey, ever leading inward to the very heart of God. |
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The Fourteen Station:
Jesus is Placed in the Tomb
Our Lord's body, wrapped tightly in a linen shroud, is placed in a tomb carved out of a rock face, sealed over with a large, heavy stone. There he lay for three days. It was definite. He had died as all men die. The religious and civil authorities were quite certain they had accomplished their goal. But these authorities didn't understand the nature of love, and they most certainly didn't understand God's love. Love -- found in its perfect form within the Blessed Trinity -- is self-giving love. The same love that is at the heart of the Father ever begetting the Son and the Son ever giving Himself back to the Father is the love that was shown forth in the Son becoming man. This divine love was most especially shown in the Son giving up His life for man. By dying to Self, our Lord was able to give Himself completely to His Father on our behalf. If we choose to follow in the same path as our Lord, we will discover this same paradox: we too must die to self in order to give ourselves completely to our Heavenly Father. This dying to self is no passive behavior; only through a conscious and deliberate act of the will can we truly give up our lives. In the same way that our Lord willingly gave up His spirit to His Father, we too must willingly give up our spirit. And by placing our complete trust in our heavenly Father, we will discover that we have been given new lives, lives transformed, and all to the greater glory of God. |
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