V. Adoramus te Christe et benedicimus tibi (We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee)
R. Quia per Crucem tuam redemisti mundum (For by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.)
“My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46).
“It is finished” (Jn 19:30).
These are two of the words we hear from the mouth of Jesus before He expired, according to the testimony of the Gospels.
V. Adoramus te Christe et benedicimus tibi (We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee)
R. Quia per Crucem tuam redemisti mundum (For by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.)
The Lord’s suffering becomes increasingly acute. He has already walked the way that led Him to Calvary, accompanied by mockery and insults, but also by the compassion and consolation He experienced in the encounter with His Mother, with Veronica and with the women of Jerusalem.
His executioners, however, feel no compassion and carry out their task with cruelty. Now they nail Jesus to the cross, like a lamb led to the slaughter (cf. Is 53:7). Defenseless, they drive the nails through Him. The pain increases more and more.
V. Adoramus te Christe et benedicimus tibi (We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee)
R. Quia per Crucem tuam redemisti mundum (For by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.)
It was not enough for the executioners charged with killing Jesus to crucify Him. They wanted to humiliate Him even more by stripping Him of His clothes.
We men are stripped of our dignity when we sin. While grace envelops us with God’s light and transforms us with divine life, sin tears the robe of grace and dishonours us, so that we are left naked and unprotected, endangering our dignity.
V. Adoramus te Christe et benedicimus tibi (We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee)
R. Quia per Crucem tuam redemisti mundum (For by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.)
Everything has to be consummated. From this perspective we can also understand the threefold fall of Jesus. The imperfect and sinful world was to be redeemed in its entirety.
The threefold fall of Jesus reminds us of the threefold denial of His beloved disciple Peter.
V. Adoramus te Christe et benedicimus tibi (We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee)
R. Quia per Crucem tuam redemisti mundum (For by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.)
Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem. They remained faithful to Him. Their hearts are aching, because they see the Son of God suffering on the way to the crucifixion, suffering for humanity. So we see that there were also those who did not close their hearts to the Lord.
Perhaps they did not yet understand the full extent of the events, but they have compassion for Jesus. He sees their compassion and accepts their weeping. However, He announces to them the true grief that awaits them. His death will not be final, for He will soon rise again. Then His suffering will be over.
Once again we see how difficult the way is. How many burdens does the Lord carry on His shoulders: the physical burden, the spiritual burden, all that is happening around Him, the cruelty of so many? But what weighs most on Him is the burden of sin, which brings separation from God, and which Jesus now takes upon Himself in His own flesh for our sake, depriving Himself of the glory of the Father.
V. Adoramus te Christe et benedicimus tibi (We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee)
R. Quia per Crucem tuam redemisti mundum (For by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.)
In Veronica, Jesus finds a kind soul, a soul that has compassion for Him. She does not mock Him, she does not turn her back on Him, nor is she indifferent to Him. With this gesture of love and compassion, she shows Him her heart by offering Him a handkerchief. Jesus understands the gesture and imprints His face on the cloth. He leaves a deep imprint of His being on this pious soul.
If the Lord had just been comforted by the encounter with His Mother, who loved Him with all her heart, He now experiences Simon’s forced help. The Scriptures do not reveal to us what the Cyrenian must have felt when he suddenly found himself so closely bound to the Lord’s destiny. Did he simply do his duty and then go on his way? Or did the Lord touch his heart, so that something happened within him? Was he before a mere spectator of the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth or was his heart already open to the Lord? We do not know!
V. Adoramus te Christe et benedicimus tibi (We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee)
R. Quia per Crucem tuam redemisti mundum (For by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.)
An encounter of great depth… The Mother sees her suffering Son.
She had said “yes” to the Father’s will and understood that her Son was the Saviour of the world. Now she sees Him walking this path of humiliation in order to exalt us men, just as the old man Simeon had foretold:
Read MoreThe way of the Lord is unimaginably difficult! It was not only the physical suffering that tormented Him, but above all the weight of sin that He carried to the cross for us men. If a single sin weighs immensely on us until we have presented it to the Lord and received His forgiveness, how much more the countless faults of all mankind!
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