Via Crucis 2006

Via Crucis Grid Blog: Things of Infinite Importance Stations 4 & 5

I can't imagine Simon was that thrilled carrying the cross that day. More likely, he cursed his rotten luck and probably said more than a few choice words under his breath to God that day.

But if he was even a little bit open to it, I wonder if he didn't take something away from the experience. If being compelled to carry another's burden even for a little while didn't shape him in some quietly profound.

We'll never know, of course, but I wonder. Because the heart of compulsion is losing control. And when we give up control -- amazing things can happen.

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: U2 Sermons Station 4

Via Crucis Grid Blog: One Room Stations 1 & 2

I've been listening to the Wailin' Jenny's CD 40 Days over Lent this year, and these lyrics from Heaven When We're Home have stuck: There's no such thing as perfect, / and if there is we'll find it when we're good and dead. Seeing Christ fall here helps me loosen my grip a little on prideful attitudes of perfection, and opens me up to confessing my times of falling down. I take comfort knowing how profoundly (Christ) understands my fatigue and my defeats.

She knows the sorrow in every mother's heart, who has lost a child to tragedy or violence.

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: Things of Infinite Importance Station 3 & 4

Station III -
Jesus falls for the first time

Failure. Humiliation.

Jesus falling isn't just about him being tired and beaten. It's about failure and humiliation. About not being able to complete a task. Not being able to do it.

What does it matter? The die is cast. Jesus is on his way to die. What does it matter if he can carry the cross the whole way. But even the condemned have pride. The last thing you hold onto is the ability to walk to your execution with your head held high. Even though it's the end, how you approach it is your last bit of control.

It's Prince Richard's response to Prince Geoffery in A Lion in Winter: "As if it matters how a man falls down."

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: sententiae et clamores Stations III & IV

Someone who had never heard of Jesus Christ would be very puzzled from the beginning of the story -- God made flesh, dwelling among us. Would he not be made a king and worshipped accordingly? No, we tell them, he was treated as a criminal. Did not, then, he reveal his power, striking down those involved in such sacrilege? No, we tell them, he did not. He had revealed his power in miracles of healing, and more so in miracles of teaching, and when this whole cruel, bloody sacrilege was over, he would reveal his power in an astonishing, profound, and world-changing way, but now he was letting himself be beaten, mocked, and burdened with a cross. Not quite believable, our hearer would say.

Quis est homo qui non fleret,
matrem Christi si videret
in tanto supplicio?

Quis non posset contristari
Christi Matrem contemplari
dolentem cum Filio?

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Via Crucis Grid Blog: Surviving the Workday Station 3 & 4

To quote Gary Wills, New Testament scholar, "The Gospels are scary, dark, and demanding. It is not surprising that people want to tame them, dilute them, make them into generic encouragements to be loving and peaceful and fair."

The Stations of the Cross is not only as the journey that Jesus makes from condemnation to death to resurrection, but as the journey that we all make through life, full of moments of pain as well as joy.

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