1st April.

Eleventh Station I AM NAILED TO THE CROSS

The pain of those nails almost made me black out. They were blunt Roman spikes that crushed flesh and bone. Yet it was not so much that pain I felt. It was the agony that welled up at the thought of what was happening. “Why, Father? Why nails in your Son?”

Let me tell you the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is the blind impersonal clashing of forces that is universal. Suffering is uniquely human. An animal may be in pain, but there is no suffering. Suffering springs from a mind capable of turning raw pain into agony by asking why. Why is this happening to me? Must it happen? Is it fair?

That is why you must never underestimate the degree of suffering of any of your brothers or sisters. If you look only at their pain, you may wonder what they have to complaint about. But you cannot see their suffering. You don’t know how sensitive their souls are, how quickly their pain can become insufferable agony. Instead of judging, do all you can to relieve both their pain and their suffering.

31st March.

Tenth Station: I AM STRIPPED OF MY CLOTHES

When I was stripped of my robes, it hurt because parts of them were plastered to my body with caked blood. But it didn’t hurt my ego. By this time, I had nothing to cling to. I was emptied.

I want so much for you to know and live the truth symbolised by the ripping off of my clothes. My human life was an emptying of myself so I could be filled by my Father. Your life must be the same.

Clothes are very personal. You would instinctively resist having them ripped from you. Yet clothes are a part of your outer self, and a symbol of it rather than your spirit. The more you cling to your superficial self, the more you wrap layers of clothing around you that will one day be all stripped off. Your death will be the end of your ego, and all other empires you have been building in a lifetime.

If you have died daily to yourself, the stripping of your humanity at death will not hurt so much. You may, like me, not even clutch at them as your clothes are stripped from you

30th March.

Ninth Station: I FALL A THIRD TIME

I have no regrets about this fall. My strength was gone. I did not want to fall and I did not want to stand. I just fell. And this time I had to be helped up. I couldn’t get up myself.

You may someday fall for a third time and have no strength to get up. You will have to be picked up by others. Don’t let that lead to despair; it does not mean you are less than human. Do not let those around you rob you of your dignity when you are on the ground. “What good am I to anyone” you may ask as others pick you up. If you bear your weakness with love, you are doing wonders for yourself, as well as the whole of creation. You are making yourself like me.

In this life, you cannot become like me in many things. You cannot have the power I have. You cannot have the knowledge I have. You cannot have the wisdom I have. But you can become like me in the love you show when you are helpless.

29th March.

Eighth Station I MEET THE WOMEN OF JERUSALEM

Why wasn’t I more understanding with these women, who, after all, seemed to be showing me sympathy? Instead of graciously accepting their show of concern, I turned on them with the seemingly harsh words; ‘Don’t weep for me, Weep for yourselves and your children’.

I was harsh because these women were part of a great multitude of curiosity seekers who had turned out to watch an execution. Remember that these women were engaged in a kind of formal religious practice of mourning and lamenting for the dead or condemned. They were weeping for the sake of weeping. They were weeping without really knowing me or my Father.

I am intolerant of religious routines when they are an excuse to avoid your deep personal commitment to me and my Father. Sometimes it is better to be silent, to pour out your heart where no one can hear. Go to you room and pray. When you know for whom you weep, then come to Calvary’s road.

28th March.

During the remainder of Lent I intend to cover the Stations of the Cross by posting them as daily reflections. If you would like to download a double sided sheet with all 14 meditations, click on http://www.tiny.cc/LENTSC or http://www.tiny.cc/LENTSCUS for Europe and the USA respectively. Praying the Stations in this way can even be more effective than doing them all at once in church. Please read the daily meditations slowly and prayerfully. Imagine that Jesus is speaking to you directly. Apply what he says to your life and your view of the Big Picture.

Seventh Station I FALL THE SECOND TIME

I had wanted to pace myself better to make it to Calvary without another fall. But I tripped. I’m not sure how. Maybe it was a loose cobblestone, a rock I stubbed my foot on or a wet spot that was too slick.

This fall shows me up for being human as nothing else on my way to Calvary. I had enough strength and presence of mind to avoid it. Why did I fall? I think I was lulled into a momentary lapse. Simon had eased my burden. Veronica had soothed my sweaty face. A breeze had cooled my body. What flashed in my mind was that these fleeting strokes of good fortune meant I could somehow bypass the rest of the journey. Before I even recognised that as a ‘temptation’, I fell.

What a profound lesson for your! Momentary good fortune does not mean the struggle is over. If things are looking rosy, be careful. You may be about to fall harder. Both good and bad are fleeting in this life. Be detached. Do not count on them. Count on nothing expect my Father.

27th March.

Sixth Station: VERONICA WIPES MY FACE

I am grateful to Veronica for wiping the blood, sweat and dirt from my eyes. She had not been as close to me in life as many others, but she responded when I needed an act of kindness. Do you realize she was the last person in my earthly life to touch me in a gentle act of mercy?

You never know when an act of kindness you do will be the last one a person experiences. So you should regard every opportunity for kindness as an act that will last an eternity. Kindness begets kindness. Veronica didn’t just happen to be at the right place at the right time. She had spent a lifetime learning to be gentle. My face wasn’t the first – or the last – that she soothed.

You, too, cannot expect to be gentle in a crisis unless you have practiced gentleness so often that it comes naturally. Would you have wiped my face? How can you say you would have if you had ignored a thousand troubled faces before you saw mine?

26th March – 5th Sunday of Lent (A).

EXTRA FOR LATER? TOTUS TUUS is a wonderful new Catholic magazine and the latest edition can be read online at https://tiny.cc/TTE31 . Try reading an article or two this week. It makes for an ideal gift to a family member or friend – see page 2 for subscription details.

The following is a link to my weekend Mass. Fast forward to 16:05 if you want to locate my homily.

https://fb.watch/jw3eBbgIhO/

25th March – Solemnity of the Annunciation and Incarnation.

—-FOR EUROPEANS—-

DAY FOR THE UNBORN is celebrated today, Saturday 25th, the solemnity of the Annunciation and the Incarnation. On this day Jesus, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, entered our world – not as a baby in the manger but as an embryo in the womb of his mother Mary, nine months before his birth. We all started off like this!

The following video dramatizes Mary’s YES to the Archangel Gabriel: “I am the servant of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word” Luke 1:38.

24th March.

Fifth Station SIMON IS FORCED TO CARRY MY CROSS

I felt badly for Simon of Cyrene. He had no way of preparing for what happened to him. He was a farm hand coming in from the fields when the soldiers forced him to carry my cross. I overheard him complaint to himself, ‘Why me?’

Don’t you dare condemn Simon. You would have been startled, reluctant and bitter, too, if you had been in his shoes! You must learn, as Simon did, that much in life is not just and fair. You will be startled by crosses thrust upon you when you least expect them. When that happens, my Father and I will not hold against you your reflexive cry of ‘Why me?’ But you must quickly move beyond that. You must not spend your life looking for ‘reasons’ for your crosses. You may never know until you die.

Learn this from Simon’s plight. My Father uses anything and anyone to accomplish salvation. He used Simon, so Simon could be said to have done the will of my Father. But that alone doesn’t make one holy, because holiness is willing what my Father wills, wanting what he wants, accepting it and embracing it and making it your own. Only you in the depths of your freedom can do that.

23rd March.

Fourth Station I MEET MY SORROWFUL MOTHER

I have just seen Mary. I wished for a second that she and I could have been spared that meeting, which was short but painful. Was I trying to hide this final agony from her, thinking she might not be strong enough ?

Do you tend to avoid your loved ones and they you, in times of crisis? Some spend a lifetime shielding their deepest selves from their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, sons and daughters. In the end, this will fail, because your death exposes your weakness to your loved ones like nothing in life could. Why wait until death or desperation to ‘meet’ your loved ones? Share with them your most profound aspirations, joys, fears, and troubles before the opportunities are gone.

But no matter how often you open yourself to them in crises, it won’t be easy. I know. You want them to see you at your best, just as I wanted Mary to see me. I didn’t want her to see me so helpless. For an instant I was under-estimating Mary and losing sight of my Father’s grace. Just as He gives you the grace to face loved ones when all hope seems lost, so he gives them grace to cope not only with your pain but theirs as well.