The Way of the Cross, protracted for 15 minutes, fulfills the obligation of meditation of the Five First Saturdays. Such a method now follows.The Way of the Cross, protracted for 15 minutes, fulfills the obligation of meditation of the Five First Saturdays. Such a method now follows.
First Station - Agony in the Garden
The zero hour in our Blessed Lord's soul. Depression of spirit, sense of failure, strange fear, burden of men's sins oppress Him - the Strong One of God. Evidence of this soul turmoil - the bloody sweat.
His Prayers: "Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt."
Affections: Jesus, sustain me in the zero hour of my soul. (Religious life, crosses, trials, ill-health, little success, misunderstanding, spiritual aridity.)
Second Station - Jesus Seeks Human Comfort
Christ is God and Christ is man. In seeking human comfort how like unto us He is. Jesus, I thank you for this tender gesture of humanness.
His so-called friends - His intimates, those of the inner circle are so unspiritual in this one moment when He needs one single look of pity, one single word of encouragement, one knowing pressure of the hand. They are overcome by sleep. Shame on such fair weather associates.
Application for me: Creatures are ineffectual in the struggle of the soul. They are insensible to our pains. Our keenest pangs we suffer alone, or only with God. Unrest of soul must toss us to God's breast.
Christ prays the same prayer three times.
Lesson for Me: Perseverance when the soul is steeped in darkness. No shortening of religious exercises. Cleave to God.
Third Station - The Capture
Under the pale eyes of the silvery moon, the God-Man prays. Homage and adoration go up to God above. The moon views another scene that night; a traitor leads his band into the garden. Lights from torches slash the darkness; a few hurried words of instruction and the perfidious Judas approaches and with the sacred sign of friendship kisses the Victim of Mankind.
He is seized, bundled off to judgment, jostled by the cruel soldiery, abandoned by one and all, and left to suffer alone.
Applications: Sin is abandonment of God; a creature is preferred to the Creator. By this act Christ is again turned over to the enemy. I abandon Christ and leave Him to suffer alone. Voluntary Distractions? Willful uncharitableness, deliberate sin, premeditated falls?
Affections: Jesus, let me be wholly Thine.
Fourth Station - Humiliations of the Trials
Jesus is treated as a find by Herod. Court life has been dull of late. Now a legerdemain is at hand. He gathers his sycophants and ladies around him, soft, sensuous music plays when into that sinful setting steps the Holy One of God.
"But Christ spoke not a word." Scorn and contempt and impious gibes are heaped upon Him. He is rated as a fool and clothed in a fool's robe.
Applications: A day of supreme triumph for purity and an eloquent excoriation for open sin and hidden vice as exemplified in Herod and his profligate court.
Affections: Jesus, I have vowed chastity to You. Keep me close to You.
May I count it a high honor to be rated, like You, a fool, for then by the strangest of paradoxes I shall be supremely wise.
Fifth Station - The Scourging
Injustice ran rampant in the trial of Christ.
"I find no cause of death in Him."
Herod's remanding of Christ was equivalent to a "not guilty" charge.
"I will therefore scourge Him and let Him go," said the weak-kneed Pilate. A flagrant, open violation of justice.
"And their testimonies were not in agreement."
The scourging terrible, humiliating, painful: by powerful, brutal, unfeeling Roman soldiers.
Natural feelings of dread, the biting, stinging lashes that ribboned His back, made livid His skin, striped His legs and chest and arms.
"By His stripes we are healed."
Affections: O battered, humiliated, outraged Jesus, devoutly I adore Your scourged and battered Body made so for love of me. Accord me the high honor of pouring into those smarting wounds and deep, dark cuts the soothing ointment of a heartfelt love and sympathetic sorrow.
Sixth Station - The Crowning with Thorns
"Art Thou a King?"
"Thou hast said it."
In mockery of His Kingship, scoffing soldiers weave a crown for this King and - fasten it securely on the sensitive Head of our suffering Lord. Deep, long and sharp thorns embed themselves in the forehead. They are pressed down by mailed fist and must be just so. Homage is paid this King. A reed, the mock scepter, is placed in His hand. The knee is bent before Him. Jeers and cat-calls and howling glee greet Him on every side.
"Hail, King of the Jews."
Applications: Marvel, at the long suffering of God. The triumph of iniquity and the persecution of the just is short-lived. It ends with time. Then comes the terrible retribution of God in eternity.
A reversal of roles: the pure will be blessed, the persecuted rewarded, sin will be punished and virtue triumphant.
Affections: My thorn-crowned King, let me be derided, scoffed and persecuted for Thy sweet sake, only spare me in eternity.
Seventh Station - Jesus and Mary
What a meeting for Son and Mother!
Mary had been Christ's constant comfort and companion. She had cradled Him in Bethlehem, cooked for Him, clothed Him, sheltered Him. All she was she owed to Him - Her singular privilege of virginal motherhood - Her Immaculate Conception.
With Him she was the world's most singularly honored woman.
Brave Mother who accepted not only the glories of motherhood but also its opprobrium. Hence this brave Mother fares forth on the highway and meets her Son going up the hill, the World's greatest and most outstanding failure. She will be known, and court today the honor of being publicly acclaimed through this meeting as the Mother of this Failure. Their eyes meet in sympathetic understanding.
Affections: O Brave Mother! O courageous Son impart to my cowardly heart a tithe of such magnificent courage to be brave under the storm of temptations and loyal in keeping the duties of my state of life.
Eighth Station - Jesus and Veronica and the Women
Women played a beautiful part in the passion of Christ.
a. His Holy Mother with Him on the Dolorous Way.
b. Pilate's wife warned him to have nothing to do with this just man.
c. Women wept with compassion for His suffering and He spoke to them.
d. Veronica now proffers Him a towel, a linen cloth and He graciously accepts. In testimony of His gratitude, a first class miracle is performed; on it He imprints the likeness of His Sacred countenance.
Affections: I grieve, O Jesus, to think of the beauty of countenance that was once Yours as the tiny Babe, the growing Youth, the perfect Man. And now - wounds, blood, cuts, blows and falls have disfigured It.
This is a perfect picture of my soul. Once it too, was beautiful in Baptism but sins have ruined it. Restore it to its former beauty, O Jesus. Do this as a perfect keepsake of Thy Sacred Passion.
Ninth Station - The Falls of Jesus
Little care, if any, was expended on the physical side of Jesus since His capture the night before.
Into those awful hours had been crowded the capture, the mock trials, the commuting before the different tribunals, the buffeting, the scourging, the crowning, the carrying of the cross, a mental and a physical suffering unparalleled in history.
Is it any wonder that He fell once, twice, thrice and even more times in His bloody climb!
Affections: Oh, weakened and suffering Savior, devoutly I adore every drop of Blood shed in this painful journey for me.
By the merits of these falls strengthen my spiritual weakness, and lagging steps in following Thee, my slothfulness in Thy holy service and give me apostolic zeal to burn myself out in carrying my cross courageously and bravely up to Calvary, "The mount where lovers are made."
- Saint Francis de Sales
Tenth Station - Jesus is Unclothed
Behold the wounds of the Lamb of God reopened by the violent unclothing on Calvary's heights.
A fresh anguish, a new type of suffering, is experienced by this "worm and no man."
Truly in Him there is no sound spot. He is like one struck by God and afflicted. We have gazed upon Him and found no beauty in Him; a leper.
- Isaias
Reflections: This disrobing by civil soldiers Jesus suffered for our lack of modesty and Christ-like decorum.
We were clothed in Christ's purity at Holy Baptism, and in subsequent confessions. In Holy Communion, to quote Saint Agnes, "His Blood reddens our cheeks." It flows afresh mystically at every Holy Mass."
Affections: O Jesus, by the Precious Blood that flowed at Your unclothing on Calvary, heal the wounds and evil tendencies of my sensuous nature and make me prize holy purity and Holy Communion, "the bread which germinates virgins." Then again through Your purifying and cleansing Blood I will be made a new edition of the Holy Spirit.
Eleventh Station - Jesus is Nailed to the Cross
An unspeakable moment in the history of man's redemption.
Has it come to this, O God, that all creation turns against Thee?
a. "The briar by the wayside which Thou didst adorn with fragrance and blossom forgot its Lord and turned against Thee to be the prickly, ungracious crown of thorns.
b. The iron formed in the earth by Thy Almighty power was forged into cruel, hard and incisive nails to pinion Thee, to a hard cross.
c. The tree upon which Thou didst pour Thy rain and spill Thy sunshine and warmth, forgot its benefactor and was fashioned into two cross beams on which Thou wast cruelly nailed."
- Monsignor Sheen
And now at the crucifixion which we contemplate, "Christ stretches forth His hands as if to cover up the vilest deed of earth and throw Himself between God and man, between heaven and earth.
"When He spread His arms, He wanted to ward off the lightenings of God. When He placed His head upon His thorny pillow and looked up to the sky with His tear-stained blood-shot eyes the earth, and the sky, and sinful man, and His Father in heaven heard His ever memorable historic seven words from the pulpit of the Cross."
- Prohaszka
Affections:
What have I cost Thee!
And how hast Thou loved me!
Twelfth Station - Jesus Dies on the Cross
A hard cross and nails through sensitive nerves and a thorn-crowned head, and a quivering lacerated Body. What a death bed! What a contrast to the soft, curving arms that cradled Him at birth.
"Elsewhere when one of our loved ones dies, everyone walks on tiptoes (quite zone); the hinges of the doors are carefully oiled to prevent the smallest, disturbing squeak; the bed is remade several times daily, the covers are constantly being rearranged; every smallest request is fulfilled.
"But for Jesus: His bed is a hard beam; His body is shivering, weakened, feverish, no cooling soothing hand or potion for Him; instead of a quilt of down, a pitiful loin cloth; instead of oiled hinges, the musketry of hammers, the jangling of nails, the clinking of dice, the blasphemy and cursing of coarse, unfeeling soldiers, the taunts of enemies and heartless persecutors; instead of balm and bandages, vinegar and gall." - Prohaszka
Affections: O dying Jesus, let me live for You who died for me; let me die for You who lived for me; then dying I shall live for You and living I shall be dead to all but You.
Thirteenth Station - Descent from the Cross
"Gently, reverently Jesus is taken down from the Cross and given to His Mother.
"She holds the crown of thorns in her hands. How cruel, how sharp, how bloody. How hard, how heavy, how sharp, how bloody. His Blood, Her Blood. The Body of her boy - how limp, how cold, how disfigured. She fondles each hand, each single wound with a mother's touch."
- Kane
Mary, Jesus has come home to you. It is as if He now says:
Thou who didst wrap me in swaddling bands, now put me in the funeral shroud.
Thou who didst so often imprint a kiss upon your Son's shining eyes, now close those lusterless eyes of your Son in death.
Affections: O Jesus! O Mary! I am now resolved, to live a stricter life so as not to cause You, my Redeemer, and you, My Mother, any more pain and anguish. O Dolorous Mother, strengthen me in the love of Jesus Crucified.
Holy Mother, pierce me through
In my heart each wound renew
Of my Savior Crucified.
Fourteenth Station - Jesus Is Laid in the Sepulchre
All through life Jesus practiced the strictest poverty and abnegation.
1. He was born in no ordinary home but in a stable.
2. In life, during His public career, "The birds have their nests, the foxes have holes, but the Son of Man hath not whereon to lay His Head."
3. In death no ordinary bed - a hand cross. Saint Bernard says: "Poor in birth, poorer in life, poorest on the Cross." For burial He is placed in another man's tomb.
"If we give Jesus our time, He gives us His eternity.
If we give Jesus our sins, He gives us His graces; if we give Jesus our coldness, He gives us His devotion.
If we give Jesus our poverty, He gives us His riches."
- Thoughts from Monsignor Sheen
Our soul is the sepulchre for Christ in Holy Communion. Through His touch our soul becomes resplendent with glory and takes on new life, an anticipated participation in the life of the Risen Savior.
Lessons of the Stations
I must be precious indeed if the God of all Wisdom thought it worth His while to undergo the ignominies of the Passion and die for me.
Rise from your knees "a new creature," throw back your shoulders in grateful pride and realize your newly acquired importance in the sight of Heaven "purchased not by corruptible gold and silver, but by the Blood of the Immaculate Son of God."
- Saint Peter the Apostle
Resolution: To put into daily practice at once the exhortation of Saint Paul:
"If you be risen with Christ seek the things that are above."
- text taken from Rosary Meditations for Fatima Saturday, by Father Lester Martin Dooley, S.V.D.