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!
Read MoreIn Roman times, criminals were punished by crucifixion. It was a death of dishonour and shame. The condemned died by suffocation.
Jesus is not only condemned to crucifixion; He has to carry His own cross. They want to make a spectacle of Him for the people.
Read MoreWith today’s meditation I conclude this series which I began after the systematic reflections on the Gospel of St John in preparation for the great solemnity of Easter.
A brief recapitulation is in order to highlight the essentials. After this meditation, we will return to the accounts of the Lord’s death and burial in the Gospel of John.
The concept of ‘discretion’, which we have learned from the desert fathers and which means ‘discernment of spirits’ in ecclesiastical usage, has led us to look carefully at the situation in the Church and in the world and to apply it also to our spiritual life. In analysing the spiritual armour proposed in the Letter to the Ephesians, we have come to the conclusion that we must prepare ourselves for the spiritual combat, which goes beyond the personal sphere, especially when we consider the anti-Christian threats to the world and to the Church.
This Lent we have set ourselves the task of being better disciples of the Lord, especially in the face of the great confusion that the Church is currently experiencing. The disciple has the task of proclaiming and glorifying his Lord. The essential content of this proclamation is found in Sacred Scripture and in the authentic teaching of the Church. This is the criterion that guides us, for as disciples we do not act in our own name but we were sent. It is not for us, therefore, to introduce our own ideas or contents which are alien to the Gospel and which would weaken the witness of Christ. It is also important that our lives be as consistent as possible with what we proclaim, so that our witness in word is not obscured by our way of life.
With these reflections we come to the end of these Lenten meditations. In the last days before Passion Sunday, I will take up the passages of St John’s Gospel that remain to be meditated on, with the exception of the resurrection stories, to which we will return after Easter.
