IV. Jesus Meets His Mother

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.

R. Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.

How could our Lady bear to see her Son suffer so dreadfully?  Every mother's heart aches for her children and she longs to be able to take those pains herself so that sometimes she offers a greater sacrifice by seeing others suffer than by suffering herself.  Mothers hate to feel powerless, for they must reach out to serve, to love, to lift up: it is their very nature.

Yet Mary, the Mother of God, did not try to take away her Son's suffering as she followed Him on the way to the cross.  Her willingness to suffer with Him by seeing Him suffer united her loving heart with His.

When finally she broke through the crowd to meet Him face to face, the tears must have streamed down her wordless face that saw His face so disfigured.  She must have longed to take Him into her arms to comfort Him as she had when He had been a little child, but she could not, for that would have renewed His pains a thousand-fold.

Perhaps she reached out to touch Him gently, her fingertips softly caressing His cheek in the only place still unhurt.  In that touch, He who had felt power flow out of Him so many times to heal must also have felt power flow into Him: the power of His mother's love, a constant love that embraced the will of the Father in all its unpleasant manifestations.  So too in the meeting of their gaze must love have flowed.  In that moment, the God of the universe drew strength from His dear creation.

In our sufferings, may we look to our Blessed Mother, knowing that she longs to take away our pain and grief, but knowing also that she bears to see us suffer out of love.  She knows that what our Lord allows to happen to us out of His most abundant Providence will transform us, transfiguring the muck of our lives into a brilliant pearl to offer Him.

My most loving Jesus, by the sorrow Thou didst experience in this meeting, grant me the grace of a truly devoted love for Thy most holy Mother. And thou, my Queen, who wast overwhelmed with sorrow, obtain for me by thy intercession a continual and tender remembrance of the Passion of thy Son. I love Thee, Jesus my love; I repent of ever having offended Thee. Never permit me to offend Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt. (From the Stations of the Cross according to Saint Alphonsus Liguori.)

III. Jesus Falls the First Time

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.

R. Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.

We have such a fear of falling—a fear of failure.  We do anything we can to avoid admitting our own brokenness, our own inadequacy.

Do you think Christ thought of that as He fell beneath the weight of the cross?

Imagine Him, fallen on one knee, barely keeping from pitching head-first upon the ground, and then imagine Him turning to look at you, as if to say: "See, I have fallen.  I will get up and go on for love of you.  Will you get up and go on for love of Me?"

When we fall, we do not want to get up.  We want to remain where we lie.  After all, if we do not rise we cannot fall again.  If we are failures, we need not fear failing.

Yet we must strip aside those lies.  We must stand up again from each fall no matter if we know that we shall fall again.

He knew that He would fall again.  He knew how painful those falls would be.  At least we are spared that knowledge.  We do not know when or how we will fail.  We do know, however, that we weak mortal creatures will fall as surely as did our Lord beneath the weight of our sins.

If He could get up and go on, so can we because He told us to follow Him.  He would not have said it were it not possible.  Therefore, even from the depths of our failures and inadequacies causing us to muck about in the mire, we can stand again, muddy and bloodstained perhaps, but with eyes flaming with the fire of love.

Only love will carry us up and onward.  Only love will bring us face to face with Him.

My beloved Jesus, it is not the weight of the Cross, but my sins, which have made Thee suffer so much pain. Ah, by the merits of this first fall, deliver me from the misfortune of falling into mortal sin. I love Thee, O my Jesus, with my whole heart; I repent of having offended Thee. Never permit me to separate myself from Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt. (From the Stations of the Cross according to Saint Alphonsus Liguori.)

II. Jesus Takes Up His Cross

(If you missed my introduction to these meditations on the Stations of the Cross you can find it here.)

The Second Station

Jesus Takes Up His Cross

If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. (Matthew 16:24)

Imagine Christ, having been scourged and crowned with thorns, wearied unto death and then they hold out the cross to Him.  Would you rush forward to embrace the cross in such a state?  Would you in any state?

Yet our Lord, with the fire of love burning so intensely within Him, embraced that cross as had never done any criminal before Him.  He chose to take it up.  He did not require the soldiers to force Him to carry it, even in his extreme weakness, even though He had already lost so much blood He could easily have been near to death.

Do you think He thought of you in that moment?  Why did He take up the cross except for love of you so why should He not have thought of you?

Perhaps then by thinking of Him we too can take up our crosses and follow Him.  We can embrace the cross that is so often our own selves with all our flaws and failings.  There are few things more difficult to bear than our own inadequacies.  Perhaps it is no accident that we were created in such a way that we can extend our arms to form a cross.

Yes, you are your own cross.

Be patient with yourself, be willing to suffer, and with that cross that is yourself step out following Him.  Imagine Him turn as He carries His own cross and smile at you in gratitude.  Seeing you follow Him makes His journey that much more bearable.

My most beloved Jesus, I embrace all the tribulations Thou hast destined for me until death. I beseech Thee, by the merits of the pain Thou didst suffer in carrying Thy Cross, to give me the necessary help to carry mine with perfect patience and resignation. I love Thee, Jesus my love; I repent of having offended Thee. Never permit me to separate myself from Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt. (From the Stations of the Cross according to Saint Alphonsus Liguori.)

I. Jesus is Condemned to Death

One of my earliest memories associated with church (aside from lying under the chairs to benefit from someone's ability to make origami water bombs and singing "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" with the rhyming words such as "beast" and "priest" switched) is the praying of the Stations of the Cross and the singing of the Stabat Mater.  That memory became all the more precious to me once I discovered that Blessed Jacopone da Todi is credited with writing that beautiful Marian hymn.

The Stations of the Cross remains one of my favorite devotions.  What power there is in this meditation on the suffering that we wish to flee at all costs and that our Lord took on solely out of His great love for us.

Because of my attraction to this devotion, and impelled to take up some small Lenten practice here on the Interweb that the Holy Spirit may work through these petty words I scatter about now and again, it seems right to look at each of the stations throughout Lent.  So accompany me, if you will, on this journey with our Lord to find whatever insights He will give through these ponderings.

The First Station

Jesus is Condemned to Death

And [Pilate] entered into the hall again, and he said to Jesus: Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer.  Pilate therefore saith to him: Speakest thou not to me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee?  Jesus answered: Thou shouldst not have any power against me, unless it were given thee from above. Therefore, he that hath delivered me to thee, hath the greater sin.
John 19:9-11


The power of Christ shines so brightly through its human shroud in His words answering Pilate.  There are thousands of responses He might have made to Pilate, but the fact that He chose these words must draw our attention to what He means.  One phrase in particular stands out in bold assertion:

Thou shouldst not have had any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above.

He might have said to Pilate: "I am not afraid of you because I know that My Father has given this power into your hands and it is My will to accomplish all that He desires of Me."  He might have said: "The Father's Providence has taken even your small part into account."  He might have said it hundreds of different ways.  The meaning remains the same: God, the Almighty Father, gives power to men that they may choose to do the most cruel and evil things because through the suffering that results He will work the greatest good any could ever imagine.

So it is in our lives.  Many things say to us in one way or another: "Look at the power I have over you.  Aren't you going to do something about it?"

Of course we do.  We complain.  We look for a way out.  We try to justify an easier path.

If only we could respond as boldly as our Lord: "No, you have no power over me except what has been given from above.  Therefore I will trust in the Father's Providence to arrange for good to come from all the suffering and evil in my life that I have no power over.  If I have not the power, He does."

Jesus, give us this grace, we beg You!

My adorable Jesus, it was not Pilate, no, it was my sins that condemned Thee to die. I beseech Thee, by the merits of this sorrowful journey, to assist my soul in its journey towards eternity. I love Thee, my beloved Jesus; I repent with my whole heart for having offended Thee. Never permit me to separate myself from Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt. (From the Stations of the Cross according to Saint Alphonsus Liguori.)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Partly because the feast of the martyr Valentine has been hijacked by our materialistic society as an excuse for excessive consumerism, and partly because his feast is no longer on the regular liturgical calendar (and partly too because there is a certain pleasure in being contrary), I insist upon wishing everyone a good feast of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius.  Today, however, in the face of the strange coinciding of the world's celebration of Valentine's Day with the Church's celebration of Ash Wednesday, I choose to pay more heed to the former than I do typically.

Why, you might ask, would I care more about Valentine's Day when it falls on the first day of Lent than when it happens during ordinary time?  Well, because then it corresponds more closely to the true valentine given by the martyr: the gift of his life.

And what is Ash Wednesday then but a valentine from God to us?

So perhaps that isn't quite the sort of cheery valentine you would expect from a God who loves you.  After all, a crown of thorns and a cross certainly symbolize more pain than any of us would like to consider.  And those chilling words: Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

Yet for a God who loves you far more than you could ever think of loving yourself and who wants you to let go of these shadows here below in order to find Him, and ultimately to live with Him forever, it is the only suitable valentine to send.  If He sends flowers, they have their thorns.  He does not want to lull us into a false sense of security, but to shake us from our lethargy, to transform our hearts by shaking out the lies we tell ourselves because it is easier to believe them than it is to believe in a God who works miracles through suffering.

The purpose of His letter of love, though, is not to crush us in suffering.  Rather, it is to bring us to perfect joy.

For what greater joy is there than in the truth?  And the truth is that we are more than conquerors through Him who loves us.  (See Romans 8:37.)  We need nothing of this world to make us happy, but only a relationship with our Beloved who speaks to us through every moment of every day, His voice too shrouded in the shadows.

The men marked of the Cross of Christ

Go gaily in the dark.

~G.K. Chesterton

Maybe You Would Do It?

There's always something more you want, isn't there?

Thus the mortal coil.

There's always something we want—something we need—for ourselves or for those we love.  Sometimes we can pray desperately for that thing, whatever it is, convinced that if only God would grant us that then everything would be okay—not perfect still, but good.

That's a lie of course.  As soon as He granted that one thing there would always be something else we needed to make us happy or holy or whatever adjective reared its masked head.

I can hardly help but marvel at how universally true that seems to be.  Whether I am in the midst of trials, struggling along by force of stubborn will, and think if only I had some bit of clarity, I could bear the suffering; or whether I have had a most amazing weekend full of good connections and bits of spiritual insight and think there is this one thing that would be awesome if God would do: that something is there, impossible to forget, and as changeable as our fickle emotions.

In one such recent moment, there came to my mind a delightful analogy, which I would like to share with you.  I shall embellish it for you in dramatic form, as a playwright must, even though the imagery my mind conjured up was much better than these few paltry words woven more for comic effect than realism:

ME: I know You probably aren't going to do this thing, and I don't really need it, but it would be so amazing and I know You could do it if You wanted to.

GOD: Why would you want that? Because you want to be a puddle for the devil to come and drink up? I want you to be a warrior in armor when he comes to attack you.

ME: Well, no, I don't want the devil to drink me up like I'm a bunch of liquid, but—

GOD: That's what you're asking for.  If you're saying please give me whatever I want so all I have to do is sit here and bask in the light reflecting off me, then in essence you are saying don't give me all of these opportunities to train myself and become strong enough to carry the armor that will withstand the enemy's straw.

ME: I thought I'd have to worry about more than a straw in the enemy's attack.

GOD: Only if you have armor.

ME: Then what will he come against me with?  A toothpick?

GOD: Probably more like a vacuum cleaner.

ME: So my armor has to be heavy enough that I can't be sucked up?

GOD: Now you've got the right idea.

ME: What if I had heavy armor?

GOD: You don't need to worry about that when you're still at the try-not-to-be-a-puddle stage.

Mirror of the Soul

Sometimes it is far too easy to question the purpose of being an artist.  Why put hours upon hours upon hours into creating some flawed piece of writing or theatre when there are so many people starving to death across the world?  Why should I expect spending years of my life on a novel about pirates to be worth anything if I could have spent that time helping the poverty-stricken?  Why would people come to see a play I've written and produced when those in other countries are dying from martyrdom or disease?

Blessed Albert Chmielowski struggled mightily with a similar question.  He ultimately decided in favor of poverty, living with the poor in order to show them that they were loved.

Karol Wojtyla found inspiration in Blessed Albert's decision for his own journey from the arts to the priesthood and even enshrined the memory of that holy brother in a beautiful play titled Our God's Brother.  His decision led him down the path to become the much-loved Pope John Paul II.

With such mighty giants striding before, is there not great precedent for abandoning the arts for a greater call?

Yet the Church has ever encouraged the arts throughout the centuries.  If there is reason for the Church's support of art then it must be more than mere frivolity.  It must have an essential purpose—a teleological reason for existing.

It may seem odd to turn to a man who proclaimed himself an atheist for many years and whose later belief in God—if belief it was—seemed a peculiar cross between his Protestant upbringing and a study of Eastern religions, but truth is often found in strange places.  One may see the light and speak the truth without yet knowing it fully.  Without further ado, a quote from the well-known playwright:

"You use a glass mirror to see your face;

you use works of art to see your soul."

~George Bernard Shaw

There Shaw succinctly describes the reason we need art.  If we are to come to know ourselves in order that we may come to know God—the very reason for our existence—we must find somewhere a mirror to reflect back to us our very souls.  For there is found the image of God.

The artist then must delve deep, deep, deep into the darkest depths of the human heart.  If he would produce that glass that tells no lies, then he must fear nothing as he searches out the wounds of his own heart, sweeping out all the pains and evils into the light of day, hiding nothing in his creative effort.  No coward would face the discomfort of unveiling the reality hidden there.  Only a brave soul can stand face to face with the Truth.