Via Crucis 2006

Via Crucis Grid Blog: Best & Worst Stations 10-12

There was the velvety blackness that comes with closing your eyes in dim light, and then it was darkness, total darkness and I saw him –  Jesus. He was standing, without a shirt, and I stood there and drank in His presence. He invited me “Open your arms”.  Slowly, I opened my arms, a bit out to the side, and he took my right arm, stretched it out, held my hand, picked up a ball hammer and a nail, and put the nail to my palm. It hurt, and the blood started to flow, and then I disputed with him “but they say that it must have been in your wrist?” and he grinned, the echoes of “as you wish” in the silence and moved the nail to my wrist. First one side, and then the other, blood streamed, the pain caused me to catch my breath, and then he was behind me and the nail went through him too before it went into the wood.

In the total darkness surrounding us, where He was there was Light. And I knew that was where I wanted to be, in His Light, with Him. And from His place behind me, the both of us fastened there, He said  “You know how to lift up your heart……..now open your arms…live in the wound…..as I do for you and all others. Live in the wound of the world.”

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: The Corner Stations 9 & 10

Mark at Cowpi Journal remixed the Via Crucis Grid Blog image.  I love the contrast.

It reminded me of a line from the the book The Outsiders, which was written in the 1960s by S.E. Hinton, a then 15 year old girl.  The book was adapted into a movie in the '80s. In the scene, Johnny (played by Ralph Macchio) tells Ponyboy (played C. Thomas Howell)

Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.

Stevie Wonder took this line and did a a wonderful song based on it.

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: sententiae et clamores Stations Ix & X

I was in Jerusalem on September 28, 2000 when Ariel Sharon went into to the al-Aqsa Mosque, provoking what came to be known as the second intifada. There was a riot and the army occupied the area around the mosque and the Western Wall. Seven Palestinians were killed by the IDF. The next day the city was tense and quiet. Soldiers were everywhere, and everyone's nerves were shot. There was no noise except for the call to prayer broadcast from loudspeakers on the minarets that looked over the city.

It was Friday and normally on that day the Franciscans would do the Via Crucis through the Old City, retracing what were traditionally thought to have been the steps of Jesus on his way to Calvary. Because of the situation that day, however, they did not venture out onto the streets, but rather carried out the whole procession inside the Holy Sepulchre, instead of just the end of it.

It was a strange and sad evening inside that strange and sad church. Huge and labyrinthine, home to so many denominations -- Greeks, Catholics, Armenians, Syrians, Copts, Ethiopians -- that night it was crowded as the Franciscans and Armenians both processed in different parts of the building, forced to share the space because of the chaos outside. The clear Gregorian hymns of the Franciscans mixed with the haunting Eastern chants of the Armenians. Outside, the people I had gotten to know over the past week were getting ready for the killing that would be practiced by both sides.

Via Crucis Grid Blog: World of Your Making Station 9 & 10

Help us do more, we must do more, to comfort the dying and heal the afflicted.

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: Lo-fi Tribe Station 10

Roman crucifixion was designed to be as humiliating as it was painful. Yes, torture and capital punishment are fused. Why? Well, to send a message to all those would be subversives, of course. Injustice was defended with the constant threat of humiliation and death. Not only were “criminals” nailed to wood, but they were stripped naked first. They were left hanging there, a visual and human object lesson to all others. Rome left you there too … as food for birds and dogs. A lack of proper burial was part of the humiliation too. The luckier ones at least were thrown into a mass pit and covered with lime. Anything is better than becoming mere carrion for beasts of air and ground.

Jesus was not special in the eyes of power-brokers. He was just another subversive peasant. He would be humiliated too.

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: Ianua Station 10

I know the pain of this one.

The humiliation of a broken battered body on display.

Standing in front of people who despise you, bare and vulnerable.

Standing bare, beaten, with nothing more left to give. Nothing to hide, no place, no safe thing to hide it.

Exposed, raw, ashamed.

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: Cowpi Journal 1

The last vestige of the world is removed from His body. Jesus stands before us in His poverty, about to give the last thing He can claim to have.

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: The Phaith of St. Phransus Station 10

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: Ron's Bloviating Station 1

After experiencing many Easters as a Christian, I still struggle to fathom the love of God. That the Father would let His Son be sacraficed, and that the Son would willingly do the will of the Father is, to me, incredible.

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