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way-of-the-cross-01
meditated by Father John Gregory of the Trinity
Preparatory Prayer
Most Blessed Virgin Mary, who was so intimately linked to the Passion of Your divine Son, our Savior, accompany us on this Way of the Cross, instruct us Yourself, show us what Your divine Son suffered for us. You knew, from His birth, that this Child had to be sacrificed for the salvation of the world and You fully accepted this sacrifice. You became the Virgin of Sorrows. Most Holy Mother, pierce our hearts so hard at the sight of the infinite sufferings of our Savior.
Let the memory of the Passion be engraved in our hearts and minds; then it will be easy for us to love our Savior, to walk in His footsteps by carrying our cross. “If anyone wants to follow Me,” Jesus tells us, “let him take up his cross daily and follow Me.” – We cannot be Christians without taking up our cross, without agreeing to carry it as we follow Jesus on the road to Calvary.
Before the Station
Before the Station
1. Jesus is sentenced to death. 
Let us consider our Savior accepting the condemnation, He the very innocence and holiness, while we, the real culprits, always want to excuse ourselves, to exculpate ourselves, to find reasons to diminish the gravity of our failings.
We deceive ourselves, we don’t like to look ourselves in the face and know the reality of our miseries. We try to exonerate ourselves by attributing our faults either to the shortcomings of the education we received, or to our environment or to the tendencies of our temperament; but rarely do we say we are guilty. Let us beat our breasts and ask Jesus to remove the scales of our illusions from our eyes. Let us humbly accuse ourselves.
Jesus, the very innocence, accepts to be the great culprit in our place. He takes upon Himself all our sins. He becomes the greatest of sinners, because we do not want to bear our faults. Thus burdened with all the sins of humanity, Jesus incurred the wrath of His divine Father.
As we contemplate Jesus condemned to death, let us ask for the grace to recognize our faults, to humble ourselves, not to try to find excuses. To recognize ourselves as poor sinners is the first condition for benefiting from the fruits of the Redemption acquired by the painful Passion of our Savior. Let us stop justifying ourselves, making excuses or blaming others!
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
2.
Jesus receives His Cross.
Jesus accepts the cross, He accepts to suffer for us who reject the cross. We reject suffering, we declare it unjust when it is pure justice. If Jesus, our Savior, had not accepted to suffer for us, we would all be lost. Without the infinite merits acquired by the holy Passion of our Lord, without His infinite mercy, we would all be condemned.
Let us thank Jesus and remember especially the great deeds of love accomplished in His Passion. Let us thank Him for saving us almost in spite of ourselves. Indeed, if God sends us sufferings, trials of all kinds, it is to save us in spite of ourselves. Men would be lost, they would go to hell, if God let them live in ease, because “the way to heaven is narrow”. In His goodness and mercy, not wanting the fruits of His Redemption to be useless, God sends sufferings of all kinds to poor humans.
Let us ask for the grace to enjoy these sufferings by accepting them with great love. Let us kiss the cross that God presents to us. Yes, my brothers and sisters, let us be grateful for the benefit of the cross which is suffering in all its forms. The cross is the greatest gift that God can give us on earth; it is the gift that He gives to His dearest friends. It is the sign of the predestined, the infallible sign of divine mercy and predestination. Let us thank God with all our hearts and ask Him for the love of the cross.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
3.
Jesus falls for the first time.
Jesus was bleeding so much that without a miracle He could not have carried the cross to Calvary. The prophets had foretold that the Savior would hang on a tree. This was God’s plan: His beloved Son was to die crucified.
Let us ask God for the grace to go to the end of our journey, to complete our earthly pilgrimage as God has planned for us. Let us ask to hold on until the end, to persevere no matter what happens, despite the trials and pains of life, in order to obtain the reward promised to souls who persevere until the end. Let us ask for this perseverance through the merits of the Holy Passion of Jesus.
Every day, at every moment if possible, let us contemplate our Savior preceding us on the road to Calvary. The road will seem less arduous if we keep our eyes fixed on Him. The road to Calvary was, so to speak, the apotheosis of our Savior’s life, the summary of His existence on earth: a perpetual way of the cross.
The tragic events, commemorated every year during Holy Week, were only the external and final Passion of Our Lord. Throughout His life He suffered His real Passion, and the Blessed Virgin was associated with it.
The Passion of Jesus began at His birth. In His foreknowledge, He knew all His coming pains, He suffered especially at the sight of so many souls rebellious to grace and who would trample on His gifts, so many souls who would despise His holy Passion and God’s advances of love to humanity. This view was the real Passion of Our Lord and His Most Holy Mother, the Mother of Sorrows.
When Mary presented Her Jesus in the Temple, the old man Simeon said to Her, “This Child will be a stumbling block to many or a rising to many, a sign that will face contradiction, and You Yourself will be a sword of sorrow piercing Your soul.”
Let us ask, then, for the grace to walk courageously in the footsteps of Jesus and Mary, to take up our cross daily, as Our Lord asks us in the Gospel, “Whoever wishes to be My disciple, let him renounce himself, take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Let us ask for this grace through the merits of our Savior’s holy Passion.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
4.
Jesus meets His Most Holy Mother.
Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin Mary were always very close; they were one. During the Passion, our good Mother was intimately linked to her divine Son, she followed Him on the road to Calvary and shared His sufferings to the utmost. It is not without reason that we call her the Mother of Sorrows, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows.
Let us ask the Blessed Virgin Mary to intercede for us with her divine Son so that our souls, redeemed at such a high price, may be purified by divine mercy. Let us ask that many souls in the world feel the fruits and benefits of the Passion of Our Lord. May this holy Passion pour exceptional graces on our spiritual family, on all of Christianity and on so many souls on the road to perdition.
O Most Holy Mother, You who suffered so much with Your divine Son, intercede for us with our Savior, intercede with the Eternal Father so that, through the merits of the Holy Passion, exceptional graces may be granted to us: graces of conversion for ourselves, graces for the Holy Church, for all mankind, especially for all those who suffer on earth, so that all these sufferings may not be in vain, but may be, by a miracle of God, identified with those of Jesus.
– Lord Jesus, may Your precious Blood purify the souls for whom You died with such love.
– My Jesus, forgiveness and mercy, through the merits of Your holy Wounds and the sufferings of Your Mother.
– Eternal Father, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You the Wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to heal those of our souls.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
5.
Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry His Cross.
Every day, in our suffering, trial’stricken neighbor, Jesus Himself presents Himself to us on the way to Calvary. Let us ask for the grace to imitate Simon’s gesture by helping Him to carry His Cross. “What you do to the least of Mine,” Jesus said, “you do to Me.”
We lack faith. Poor sinners that we are, we do not know how to recognize Jesus who passes every day and several times a day on our way, as He once passed on the way of Simon the Cyrenian.
Let us ask God to recognize Jesus who continues His Passion in His suffering members. We are sometimes tempted to envy the spectators of the temporal Passion of Jesus, that Passion which took place in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. But this same Passion is perpetuated in our midst, in favor of humanity; it is mystically renewed at every moment of the day and night on our altars, and it is also renewed in the life of the suffering members of the mystical body of Jesus.
Let us ask for the spirit of faith to know how to help Jesus in our neighbor, by a good word or a helpful gesture.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
6.
Veronica wipes the Face of Jesus.
This courageous woman sees her Savior all disfigured; she is not afraid, she rushes through the crowd to wipe the bloody face of Jesus Oh! how lucky she is! But a woman’s happiness is ours; we forget it… Every day we can wipe the bruised face of Jesus, in our neighbor. Every day we can also publicly proclaim our attachment to Jesus, by being faithful to His commandments, His Gospel and all His will,
Veronica proved her love for Jesus in a brilliant way, but we too can prove this love a hundred times a day, if we want to. Our gestures may not be as spectacular, nor will they be made on such exceptional occasions, but they will be real proof nonetheless.
We love the spectacular, we love the exceptional, but we lack love. Why did Veronica make this courageous gesture, while the Apostles were running away? It is because she loved and love gives wings,
Let us ask for this great grace of God’s love. Let us ask for this great grace of God’s love. May Jesus, through His holy Passion, set our hearts on fire with His love, this love that will make us easy and ready to do anything for our God.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
7.
Jesus falls for the second time.
On the way to Calvary, we see Jesus brutalized, mistreated, insulted and we are indignant. We forget that it is us, present in these executioners who, by our sins, gave power to Satan to massacre Jesus. We are the great culprits of the Passion of Jesus and we would like to play the innocent. Do we forget that we are often ready to put Jesus to the torture for nothing? We put Him in the balance for a vile pleasure, a small satisfaction. We prefer a nothing of the earth to Jesus, our Savior, our God; we are ready to break God’s holy commandments, God’s holy desires for our contentment For so little, we trample God’s gifts and forfeit His grace. We equate God with vulgar, worthless, sometimes even shameful things, and we would like to have a good conscience, to pass for innocent people.
Forgive us, Lord, forgive us! We ask You for the grace to make us understand the malice of our faults, the seriousness of all our disobedience to Your commandments and Your holy wills. Make us understand, O Jesus, the evil of our actions and grant us the grace of conversion.
– My Jesus, forgiveness and mercy, through the merits of Your holy Wounds and the sufferings of Your Mother.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
8.
Jesus consoles the Daughters of Jerusalem.
“Do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children,” Jesus said to the daughters of Jerusalem. The real sorrow is sin; it is not the Passion itself.
All misfortunes came to the earth through sin. Like hypocrites, we continually deplore the misfortunes that befall the world, as if they came from others; we are all guilty. We, poor humans, must admit this guilt, humbly beating our breasts. Yes, our Savior suffered because of our own sins and those of the whole world.
Our first parents disobeyed God, they rejected His Will, listening to the devil who told them: God wants to keep you in ignorance, under His yoke; ignore Him. Emancipate yourselves, free yourselves. You will be like gods, you will know good and evil… Our mother Eve listened to these words; she and Adam fell for them. History repeats itself…
The pride of the man who wants to surpass God, here is the source of all the misfortunes. Why so much suffering on earth? Why so many wars, so much poverty, so many people dying of hunger? All these misfortunes happen because man turns away from God; he does not follow the path that God has laid out for him. He listens to the voice of Satan who is jealous of the happiness that God intends for man in eternity.
God shows us the way to be happy with Him. Even in this world, God’s servants have joy and peace, despite their sufferings.
The greatest sadness is that man, in general, does not want to walk according to the Way traced by God in His commandments and in His Gospel. Men deviate from this path that leads directly to heaven, and all kinds of misfortunes follow: wars, injustices, sufferings of all kinds. When man truly takes the path of God, he becomes a “servant of God” and thus improves the condition of humanity. But there are not enough of them… we need thousands of St. Francis of Assisi, thousands of St. Curé d’Ars or St. Therese of the Child Jesus who, like so many other saints, passed through the world doing good. It is people of this kind who really improve the lot of humanity.
Nothing will change on earth until we are willing to understand this truth and return to God, walking closely united with Jesus and Mary. We can lament the world situation over and over again, but apart from the concrete amendment of our lives, all our lamentations will remain sterile.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
9.
Jesus falls for the third time.
Jesus, the strong God, took on our humanity, He took on our weaknesses to make us strong. “Without Me you can do nothing,” He says. But “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me,” writes St. Paul.
O Jesus, give us the strength, the courage to carry our cross to the end, to keep Your commandments, to obey You in all things, so that we may become saviors with You, with Your Most Holy Mother, Coredemptrix of the human race.
Give us, O Jesus, the grace to be hosts immolated and crucified with You, Give us Your strength, Jesus, we humbly ask You. We humbly acknowledge that without You we are only poor humans, weak, fragile and fickle. May the merits of Your holy Passion strengthen our souls, so that we may become Your servants, following in the footsteps of all the saints who have served You so lovingly! May we truly become Your Apostles of the Last Times to set fire to Christianity, to set fire to the hearts of our brothers and sisters, so that humanity may know better days.
By the merits of Your holy Passion, we beg You, give us this grace, O my God. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for those one loves.” This proof of love, You gave it… You had already spent Your life drop by drop, but You wanted, in an unforgettable spectacle, to give us tangible, irrefutable proofs of the infinite love You had for Your so unworthy creatures. We thank You for this and we want to return this love to You, with the help of Your holy grace and strength. Take possession of our persons, live in us. May it no longer be we who live, but may we say like Your apostle St. Paul, “It is Christ who lives in me.” Come into us, Jesus! Take possession of our persons, live in our persons. We want to give ourselves; take us!
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
10.
Jesus is stripped of His garments.
Jesus, the very dignity, the very purity, let Himself be stripped before the crowd, He accepted to undergo this affront to atone for the indecencies of men, the impurities and the scandals.
God had created man all luminous, resplendent with the glory of God. Just like the Blessed Virgin, whom the Holy Scripture calls “the Woman clothed with the Sun”, so man himself had this splendor of the divinity as his clothing, but he lost it through sin, as Genesis tells us: After the sin, our first parents realized that they were naked and were ashamed. They made clothes for themselves from tree leaves to cover their nakedness. It is not a glory to be naked; it is a disgrace. We see in nature birds adorned with beautiful plumage, animals covered with beautiful furs; but by sin, man was left in his nakedness.
Jesus having become the sinner par excellence, the man of sin – because He took upon Himself the sins of all mankind – had therefore to suffer the fate, the punishment of the sinner and be stripped.
Let us ask God for forgiveness for all our indecencies, for all our lack of modesty, for all our immodesty. Let us ask forgiveness for ourselves and for all humanity for which we are responsible.
We cannot say like Cain, “Am I responsible for my brother?” Yes, we are responsible. And if we were more given to God, humanity would be better. We call ourselves Christians, apostles and followers of Christ, we claim to be, but very often our ideas are far from those of Christ. Let’s not play innocent! We all have our share of guilt in all the sadness that happens on earth.
How often are we tempted to look down on our neighbor, to criticize him, while this poor neighbor needs our prayers, our penances. Souls need our suffrages, the merits of Jesus Christ that we could obtain for them by offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
Let us ask God to touch our hearts, to open our eyes to our miseries and to give us the grace to convert, to become true Christians, true disciples of Jesus Christ.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
11.
Jesus is nailed to the Cross.
Let us ask Jesus for the grace to be nailed with Him on the cross, to unite us intimately to Him, so that we may be one in our thoughts, desires, wills and feelings. Let nothing in us be foreign to Our Lord, but let everything in us be conformed to His thoughts, His desires, His wills, His feelings. Let us love what He loves and let us be truly crucified with Jesus, “victims of Jesus and of Jesus crucified”, as Our Lady asks in the Rule of the Order of the Mother of God.
Let us ask Our Lord every day for the grace of an intimate union with Him, that His Holy Wounds may be constantly present to our minds, never forgetting the marks of infinite love that our Savior has given us.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
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12.
Jesus dies on the Cross for our salvation.
Let us contemplate our divine Savior raised between heaven and earth. His Most Holy Mother is there receiving His last words: “Woman, here is Your son; son, here is your Mother.” Jesus has given us everything and; at this supreme hour, He gives us what remains most precious to Him on earth: He gives us His Mother, He gives Her to us for time and for eternity. In the person of St. John, we have all received this precious gift; we have become children of Mary. We can never be grateful enough to God for this.
Let us ask this Mother of Sorrows to imprint the wounds of the crucified Jesus deeply in our hearts. Let us ask her to instruct us in the things of heaven. We are so narrow-minded… All these mysteries of our religion, especially this great mystery of our Redemption, are beyond us. A God becoming man and dying for His creatures! Who can understand it? It is a mystery of love. It is something we cannot conceive in our little human heads, but it is a reality. A mystery is something that is beyond human intelligence, but it is still a reality. Our Savior died for us; we need to think about that as often as possible.
After the Station
After the Station
Before the Station
Before the Station
13.
Jesus is taken down from the Cross and given to His Holy Mother.
Let us contemplate Jesus disfigured, his head crowned with thorns, his body torn apart. All his wounds reveal God’s love for us. Who among us would be willing to suffer torment in the place of his neighbor? This would be a great proof of love that no one could doubt.
If someone among us were condemned to undergo all the torments that Jesus underwent: the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the crucifixion, and someone else came and said to him: “No, no, my friend, leave me; I will take your place. I will suffer all this in your place”, could you doubt for a moment that this person loved you? This is what Jesus did for us…
Let’s do some serious soul searching. Let’s ask ourselves if we are really walking in the footsteps of the suffering Jesus. We spend our time complaining, lamenting, and thinking that people are doing us injustice. In the face of the suffering Jesus, let us realize and accept once and for all that we deserve to suffer for the expiation of our sins. This is the least we can do in this world, if we want to share in Jesus’ kingdom.
After the Station
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Before the Station
Before the Station
14.
Jesus is laid in the tomb.
Jesus is laid in the tomb to teach us that we too must be stripped of the old man and buried with Jesus, if we are to rise with our divine Master to a new life, a life of love and generosity. May Jesus, through the merits of His holy Passion, perform this miracle on our behalf!
The Passion and death of God made man is the most extraordinary event in the history of humanity. It can never be erased. We talk about all kinds of events, but the event of Jesus dying for humanity is the greatest of all. All other events are overshadowed by this one.
O Jesus, at the end of this Way of the Cross, by the infinite merits that You have earned for us, obtain for us the grace of a new life, of a miraculous transformation, of a sincere conversion.
After the Station
After the Station
O Holy Mother of Sorrows,
impress upon my poor heart
the Wounds of my sweet Savior.
For the Supreme Pontiff
For the Supreme Pontiff
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