The Way of the Cross Blessed Marmion The Way of the Cross Blessed Columba Marmion [e\

A new translation Marmion Abbey 2021 Blessed Columba Marmion

The WayINTRODUCTION of the Cross

Let us now make together the Way of the Cross; the reflections I will present to you at each station have no other aim (must I say it?) than to aid meditation. Each can take from them what is helpful; each can vary these thoughts and sentiments following the abilities and needs of the soul.

Before beginning, let us recall the recommendation of Saint Paul: “Have this mind in you which was also in Christ … He humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even to death on a cross.”

The deeper we enter into the dispositions that the heart of Jesus had in following the way of sorrow: love for His Father, towards mankind, hatred of sin, , and obedience, the more our souls will be filled with graces and lights, because the Eternal Father will see in us a more perfect image of his Divine Son.

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y Jesus, you walked this way, Mcarrying your cross for love of me. acknowlegments I want to walk it too with you and as you did. Fill my heart with the feelings that overflowed from your heart Blessed Columba Marmion (1858-1923) prayed the Stations of the Cross daily. These re- during those sacred hours. flections were orginally published in his 1919 volume, Le Christ dans ses Mystères. Translat- ed by a of Marmion Abbey, Aurora, Il ©2021. marmion.org Offer for me to your Father Images by Leonard Porter Studio, © 2011 Fourteen Stations of the Cross, each 16x12, from the Precious Blood you shed at that moment the Church of Christ the King, New Vernon, NJ. Used with permission. leonardporter. for my salvation and my sanctification. Amen. com Jesus Is Condemned to Death by Pilate

THE SCENE esus is standing before the Roman Governor. He stands because as the Second Adam, he is the head of the entire race that he is going to redeem by his sacrifice. TheI first Adam had, by his sin, merited Jdeath: “For the wages of sin is death.” Jesus, innocent, but laden with the sins of the world, must atone for them by the Sacrifice of his own blood. The chief priests, the Pharisees, his own people, surround him like furious bulls. Through these shouts, our sins cry out and tumultuously demand the death of the Just One: “Crucify him, crucify him!” The cowardly Roman Governor hands the Victim over to them to be nailed to the cross. What does Jesus do? If he is standing, it is because he is our head; as St. Paul says, he bears witness to the truth of his doctrine, to the divinity of his person and of his mission, and yet he humbles himself interiorly before the judgment pronounced by Pilate; he recognizes in him a legitimate power: “You would have no power at all over me were it not given you from above.” In this earthly power, unworthy but legitimate, Jesus sees the majesty of his Father. And what does he do? He delivers himself up, more than being delivered up: He “yielded himself up to him who judged him unjustly.” He humbles himself by obeying even to death; He voluntarily accepts, for us, so as to give us life, the sentence of condemnation: “He was offered because it was His own will.” Just as the disobedience of one man, Adam, entailed the loss of a great number, so the obedience of one alone, Christ Jesus, will re-establish them in justice.

THE MEDITATION We should unite ourselves with Jesus in his obedience, accept everything our Father in heaven imposes on us, through whomever it be—a Herod or a Pilate—from the moment their authority becomes legitimate. Let us also, from this moment on accept death, in reparation for our sins, with all the circumstances with which it may please Providence to accompany it; let us accept it as an honor rendered to Divine Justice and Holiness, outraged by our sins; united to the death of Christ Jesus, our death will I: Jesus Is Condemned to Death by Pilate become “precious in the sight of the Lord.” THE PRAYER y Divine Master, MI unite myself to your Sacred Heart in its perfect submission and complete abandonment to the will of the Father. May the power of your grace produce in my soul that spirit of submission which delivers me, without reserve or murmur, to the good pleasure from on high, to all it shall please you to send me at the hour when I must depart this world. e Jesus Is Laden with His Cross

THE SCENE ilate handed Jesus over to them to be crucified, and they led him away, “himself bearing his cross.” Jesus had made an act of obedience; he had delivered himselfII up to the wishes of his Father; and now Pthe Father shows him what obedience imposes on him: it is the cross. He accepts it as coming from the hands of his Father, with all the sorrows and humiliations it includes. In that instant, Jesus accepted the surge of suffering brought by this heavy burden on his bruised shoulders, and the inexpressible tortures that would be inflicted upon his members, on his sacred limbs, at the moment of his crucifixion. He accepted the bitter sarcasm, the hateful blasphemies, with which his worst enemies, in their apparent triumph, would overwhelm him as soon as they saw him hanging on the infamous gibbet; he accepted the agony of the three hours on the cross, the abandonment by his Father… We could never fathom the abyss of affliction to which our Divine Savior consented upon receiving the cross. At that moment also, Christ Jesus, representing us all and who was going to die for us, accepted the cross for all his members, for each one of us: “Truly he has borne our infirmities and carried our sorrows.” Then he united to his own torments, all the sufferings of his Mystical Body; and made them draw from that union their value and their reward.

THE MEDITATION Let us accept, then, our own cross in union with him, and like him, in order to be worthy disciples of this Divine Head; let us accept it without arguing or murmuring. As heavy as was the cross which his Father had laid upon his shoulders, did it diminish Jesus’s love for his Father, his confidence in Him? Quite the contrary. “I will drink of the bitter chalice that my Father has given me.” Let it be so with us also. “If someone wishes to be my disciple, let him take up his cross, and follow me.” Let us not be among those whom St. Paul calls “enemies of the cross of Christ.” Let us rather take up our cross, the one God lays on us; in the generous II: Jesus Is Laden with His Cross acceptance of this cross, we will find peace; nothing so gives peace to the soul that suffers, as this total abandonment to God’s good pleasure.

THE PRAYER y Jesus, MI accept all the crosses, all the contradictions, all the adversities that the Father has reserved for me; may the anointing of your grace give me the strength to carry these crosses with the same docility that you have shown us in receiving your cross for our sakes; may I find glory only by participation in your sufferings. e Jesus Falls the First Time

THE SCENE e will be “a man of sorrows, and he will know infirmity.” This prophecy of Isaiah is accomplished to the letter. Jesus, exhausted by sufferings IIIof soul and body, sinks beneath the weight of Hthe cross: the All-powerful falls from weakness. This weakness of Jesus honors his divine power. By weakness, he atones for our sins, he atones for the rebellions of our pride, and “lifts up a world incapable of saving itself”: “O God, who in the abasement of your Son have raised up a fallen world…” What’s more, he merited for us in that moment the grace to humble ourselves for our sins, to recognize our own falls, to confess them sincerely; he merited for us the grace of strength to support us in our weakness.

THE MEDITATION With Christ prostrate before his Father, let us detest the promotion of our vanity and our ambition; let us recognize the extent of our weakness. As much as God puts down the mighty, so does a humble avowal of our infirmity attract his mercy; “As a father has compassion on his children, so… the Lord knows the stuff of which we are made.” Let us cry out to God for mercy in the moments when we feel ourselves weak in face of the cross, of temptation, of accomplishing the Divine Will: “Have mercy on me, O Lord, for I am weak.” It is in thus humbly proclaiming our infirmity that will break forth in us the triumph of grace, which alone can save us.

THE PRAYER Christ Jesus, prostrate before your cross I adore you. O“Power of God,” you show yourself overwhelmed with weakness to teach us humility and put our pride to shame. O High Priest full of holiness, who have gone through our trials so as to be able to sympathize with us in our infirmities, do not abandon me to myself, for I am only weakness. May your strength dwell in me so that I may not give in to evil. III: Jesus Falls the First Time Jesus Meets His Mother

THE SCENE he day has come for the Virgin Mary when the prophecy made by Simeon was to beIV fully realized in her: “A sword shall pierce your soul.” As once she had united herself to Jesus in offering him in the TTemple, now she wishes more than ever to into his feelings and to share his sufferings in this hour when Jesus is about to complete his Sacrifice. She goes to Calvary where she knows her Son is to be crucified. On the way, she meets him. What an immense sorrow to see Him in this frightful state! They look at each other, and the abyss of sufferings of Jesus calls on the unfathomable depth of the compassion of his mother. What would she not do for him? This encounter was at once a source of sorrow and of joy for Jesus. A sorrow, in seeing the profound anguish into which his very sad state was plunging the soul of his mother; a joy, at the thought that his sufferings were going to pay the price of all the graces, with which she had been and would be, filled. That is why he stops only briefly.

Christ had the tenderest heart there could possibly be: at the tomb of Lazarus he shed tears; he would weep over the misfortunes of . Never did son love his mother as he; when he encountered her so desolate on the road to Calvary, he must have felt moved in every fiber of his heart. And yet, he goes on, he continues on his way to the place of his execution, because that is the will of his Father. Mary associates herself with this feeling; she knows that all things must be accomplished for our salvation; she takes her part in the sufferings of Jesus by following him all the way to Golgotha, where she will become co-redemptress.

THE MEDITATION Nothing that is human must hold us back in our journey toward God; no natural love must shackle our love for Christ. Let us ask the Virgin to IV: Jesus Meets His Mother connect us to her in the contemplation of Jesus’ sufferings, and to give us a share of the compassion she showed to him, so that we may draw from her compassion a hatred for the kind of sin which has required such suffering. It has sometimes pleased God to show visibly the gift produced by contem- plation on the Passion. We should not desire these external marks; but we must ask that an image of the suffering Christ would be imprinted in our heart. Let us entreat from the Virgin this precious grace: Holy Mother, pierce me through, In my heart each wound renew Of my savior crucified.

THE PRAYER Mother, behold your Son; through the love that you bear him Ogrant that the memory of his sufferings accompany us wherever we go; it is in his name that we ask you; to refuse us, would be to refuse it to your Son himself, since we are his members. e O Christ Jesus, behold your Mother; for her sake, grant that our hearts be with you in your sorrows, so that we come to resemble you. Simeon of Cyrene Helps Jesus to Carry His Cross

THE SCENE As they went out, they came across a man of Cyrene named Simon and commandeered him to carry the cross of Jesus.” Jesus is exhausted. Even though he is the All-Powerful,V he wants his sacred humanity, “laden with all the sins of the world, to experience the weight of justice and atonement. But he wants us to help him carry his cross. Simon represents us all, and it is all of us that Christ asks to share his sufferings: we are his disciples only on this condition. “If someone wants to walk in my footsteps, let him take us his cross, and follow me.” The Father has decided that a share of sorrow be left to the mystical body of his Son, so that a portion of expiation be endured by his members. Jesus wishes it too, and it was to signify this divine decree that he accepted the help of the Cyrenean.

THE MEDITATION But at the same time, he gained for us in this moment the grace of strength to endure these trials generously; he has put into his cross the ointment that makes our trials tolerable; because in carrying our cross, it’s really his that we accept. He unites our sufferings to his pain, and by that union he confers on them an inestimable value, the source of great reward. Our Lord said to Saint Mechtild of Hackeborn: “As my divinity drew to itself the sufferings of my humanity, and has made them its own, so also will I transfer your pains into my divinity; I will unite them to my Passion and I will make you participate in this glory that my Father conferred on my sacred humanity in return for all its sufferings.” This is why the letter to the Hebrews, encourages us to endure all things for love of Christ; “Let us run with perseverance the race that lies before us, eyes fixed on Jesus, the guide and perfecter of our faith; in place of the joy set before him, scorning disgrace, he suffered the cross and thus merited to be seated at the right hand of the throne of God. — Consider the one who put up with so much opposition from sinners, so that you may not be overcome by discouragement.”

V: Simeon of Cyrene Helps Jesus to Carry His Cross THE PRAYER y Jesus, I accept from your hand Mthe splinters you detach for me from your cross; I accept all the annoyances, the opposition, the pains, the sufferings that you permit or which it pleases you to send me; I accept them as my share of reparation; unite the little which I do with your inexpressible sufferings; because it is from your sufferings that mine draw all their merit. e A Woman Wipes the Face of Jesus

THE SCENE radition recounts that a woman, filled with compassion, approached Jesus and extended a cloth to wipe his adorable face. Isaiah foretold of VIthe suffering Jesus that “he would have in him Tno form or beauty to attract our attention … we would esteem him not.” The Gospel tells us that the soldiers gave him disrespectful slaps, that they spat on his face; and the crown of thorns made blood flow on his holy face. Christ Jesus willed to suffer all that to take away our sins; he willed to heal us by the bruises his divine face endured: “By his wounds we are healed.”

THE MEDITATION Being our elder brother, by substituting himself for us in his Passion, he restored to us the grace which makes us children of his Father. We ought to resemble him, seeing that that is the very destiny willed for us: “to become conformed to the image of his Son.” How is that? Entirely disfigured as he was by our sins, Christ in his Passion remained the Beloved Son, the object of all his Father’s delight. We resemble him in this if we keep within us the sanctifying grace which is the source of our likeness to God. We are like him also by practicing the virtues he showed during his Passion, by sharing the love he has for his Father and for souls, his patience, his strength, his gentleness, his kindness.

THE PRAYER Heavenly Father, O in return for the brises your Son, Jesus will to suffer for us, glorify him, exalt him, give him the splendor he deserved when his adorable face was disfigured for our salvation.

VI: A Woman Wipes the Face of Jesus Jesus Falls a Second Time

THE SCENE et us consider our Divine Savior yielding once more to the weight of the cross. God had placed on his shoulders all the sins of the world: “The Lord has VIIlaid on him the iniquity of us all.” These are our sins Lwhich weigh him down; he sees them all, in their multiplicity and their detail; he accepts them as his own, to the point of appearing, in the very words of Saint Paul, nothing but living sin: “For our sake God made the sinless one into sin.” As the Eternal Word, Jesus is all-powerful; but he wants to experience all the weakness of a humanity weighed down. This entirely voluntary weakness honors the justice of his heavenly Father, and gains strength for us.

THE MEDITATION Let us never forget our infirmity; let us never give way to pride; however great the progress we may believe ourselves to have made, we always remain too weak to carry our cross in the way of Jesus: “Without me you can do nothing.” Only the divine power that flows from him becomes our strength: “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me;” but that strength is only given us if we beseech him often.

THE PRAYER Jesus, Omade weak for love of me, weighed down beneath the weight of my sins, give me the strength that is in you, so that you alone will be glorified by my works!

Jesus Speaks to the Women of Jerusalem

THE SCENE Jesus was followed by a great crowd of the people and of women who were beating their breasts and lamenting over him. Turning toward them, JesusVIII said: Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but “weep for yourselves and for your children, for the days are coming in which people will say: Blessed are those who were sterile … And people will cry out to the mountains: fall on us … For if the green wood is treated like this, what will they do to the dry wood?”

THE MEDITATION Jesus understands the inexpressible requirements of his Father’s justice and holiness. He recalls to the daughters of Jerusalem that this justice and this holiness are beautiful perfections of the Being of God. He himself is a “High Priest, holy, innocent, pure, set apart from sinners,” he is only substituting himself for them; and yet, see with what harsh blows Divine Justice strikes him. If this Justice requires of him so extreme a reparation, how severe will be the punishment of the guilty who have so stubbornly refused even to the Last Day to unite their share of atonement to the sufferings of Christ? “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” On that Day, the disarray of human pride will be so deep, the anguish of those who have wanted nothing to do with God will be so terrible, that those unhappy souls, banished far from God for ever, will gnash their teeth in despair; they will ask “the hills to cover them,” as if they were able to escape from the fiery flames of a justice which they themselves will acknowledge as entirely fair. Let us implore the mercy of Jesus for that frightening day when he will come, no longer as a Victim collapsing under the weight of our sins, but as Sovereign Judge “to whom the Father has given all power.”

VIII: Jesus Speaks to the Women of Jerusalem THE PRAYER my Jesus, have mercy on me! OO you who are the Vine, grant that I remain united to you through grace and good works, so that I bear fruit that is worthy of you; so that I do not become, by my sins, a dead branch, good only for being cut off and cast into the fire.

e Jesus Falls a Third Time

THE SCENE God,” said Isaiah, in speaking of Christ during his Passion, “willed to crush him with suffering: to break him in infirmity.” Jesus is crushed by “justice. IX THE MEDITATION We will never be able, even in heaven, to quantify what that was for Jesus. No creature, not even the damned, has borne the weight of it in all its fullness. But the sacred humanity of Jesus, united to this Divine Justice by direct contact, has borne all the power and all the severity of it. That is why, as Victim who has given himself by love to all its wounds, he is broken by the anguish that this Holy Justice makes bear down upon him.

THE PRAYER my Jesus, Oteach me to detest the sin which makes Justice demand such suffering from you! Grant that I may unite all my own pain to your suffering, so that through them I may overcome my faults and please you even here, even now.

IX: Jesus Falls a Third Time Jesus Is Stripped of His Garments

THE SCENE They divided my garments among them, and for my robe they cast lots.” That is the prophecy of the psalmist. Jesus is stripped of everything and left in the nakedness ofX absolute poverty, he does not even have “command of his own clothes; for as soon as he is lifted up on the cross, the soldiers will divide them, and will cast lots for his tunic. Jesus, moved by the Holy Spirit, abandons himself to his executioners as Victim for our sins.

THE MEDITATION Nothing is so glorious for God, nor so useful to our souls, than joining the absolute and unconditional offering of ourselves to the one which Jesus made at the moment when he abandoned himself to the executioners to be stripped of his garments and nailed to the cross, in order by his deprivation “to give back to us the riches of his grace. This offering of ourselves is a true sacrifice; this surrender to the Divine Will is the foundation of the whole spiritual life. But in order to acquire its whole value, we must unite it to the offering of Jesus, for “it is through this offering that he has sanctified us all.

THE PRAYER my Jesus, Oaccept the offering I make to you of my whole being, join it to that one which you made to your Heavenly Father at the moment you arrived at Calvary; strip me of every attachment to what is created and to myself!

X: Jesus Is Stripped of His Garments

Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross

THE SCENE They crucified him and two others with him, one on either side, and Jesus in the middle.” Jesus delivers himself up to his executioners: “as a lamb, without openingXI his mouth.” The torture of this crucifixion by “nails through the hands and through the feet is inexpressible. Who would be able to express above all the feelings of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in the midst of these torments? He must undoubtedly have been repeating those words he said on coming into this world: “Father, you no longer want holocausts of animals, they insufficient to your holiness; but you have given me a body: Here I am!” Jesus sees continuously the face of his Father, and with immeasurable feelings of love, he delivered up his body to atone for all the insults given to Eternal Majesty. They crucified him between two thieves: “He became obedient unto death.” And to what death did he submit? “Death on a cross.” Why was that? Because it is written: “Cursed be one who hangs on a tree.” He willed to be “counted among the wicked” in order to acknowledge the sovereign rights of Divine Holiness.

THE MEDITATION He delivered himself for us. Jesus, being God, saw us all in this moment; he offered himself up to redeem us, because it was to him, High Priest and Mediator, that the Father gave us. What a revelation of Jesus’ love for us! “Greater love no one has, than that he lay down his life for his friends.” He could not have done more: “he loved us to the end.” And this love, it is also the love of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, because they are but one.

THE PRAYER Jesus, who, “in obedience to the will of the Father, and with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit, Ohave by your death given life to the world; deliver me by your most holy Body and Blood from all my iniquities and from every evil: make me cling to your law and never let me be separated from you.” XI: Jesus Is Nailed to the Cross

Jesus Dies on the Cross

THE SCENE And crying out with a loud voice, Jesus said: Father I deliver my spirit into your hands. And having said these words, he expired.” After three hours of unspeakableXII sufferings, Jesus dies. The only offering worthy “of God, the unique sacrifice that redeems the world, and sanctifies souls is accomplished: “For by one offering he has forever perfected those who are sanctified.”

THE MEDITATION Christ Jesus promised that when he would be “lifted up on the cross, he would draw all things to himself.” We are his in two ways especially: as creatures fashioned from nothingness by him and for him; and as souls “redeemed by his precious blood.” One single drop of blood from Jesus, the Man-God, would have been enough to save us, because everything in him has infinite value; but, among so many other reasons, he wanted his blood to be poured out to the last drop from the piercing of his Sacred Heart, to show us the extent of his love. And it is for us all that he shed his blood; each one of us can in all truth repeat the ardent words of Saint Paul: “He loved me, and gave himself up for me!” Let us ask him to draw us to his Sacred Heart by virtue of his death on the cross; let us ask that we might “die to our self-love, to our own will— sources of so many infidelities and sins, and that we might live for him who died for us. Since it is to his death that we owe the life of our souls, is it not right that we should live only for him? “That they who are alive should live no longer for themselves, but for him who died for them.”

THE PRAYER Father, glorify your Son hanging from the gallows. OSince he humbled himself even to death, and to death on a cross, raise him; may the name you have given him be exalted; may every knee bend before him; may every tongue confess that your Son Jesus lives henceforth in your eternal glory! XII: Jesus Dies on the Cross The Body of Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross and Given to His Mother

THE SCENE he bruised body of Jesus is given back to Mary. We cannot even conceive of the sorrow of the Virgin in this moment. Never did motherXIII love her child as Mary loved Jesus; her mother’s heart was Tfashioned by the Holy Spirit to love this Man-God. Never did human heart beat with more tenderness for the Word Incarnate than the heart of Mary. For she was full of grace, and her love encountered no obstacle whatsoever to love’s blossoming. Besides, she owed everything to Jesus; her Immaculate Conception, the privileges that make her a unique creature, that had been given to her in anticipation of the death of her Son. What inexpressible sorrow was hers when she received in her arms the bloody body of Jesus!

THE MEDITATION Let us throw ourselves down at her feet to ask her pardon for our sins that were the cause of so much suffering.

THE PRAYER Mother, source of love, O make me understand the intensity of your sorrow, so that I can share in your affliction; make my heart be aflame with love for Christ, my God, so that I think of nothing but pleasing him!

XIII: The Body of Jesus Is Taken Down from the Cross and Given to His Mother Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb

THE SCENE Joseph of Arimathea, having taken the body of Jesus down from the cross, wrapped it in a shroud, and laid it in a tomb hewn from the rock, “where no oneXIV had yet been buried.” THE MEDITATION Saint Paul says that Christ had to be “like us in all things.” Even to his tomb Jesus is one of us: “They buried him,” says Saint John, “in the manner of the Jews, with linens and spices.” But the body of Jesus, united to the Word, “was not to see corruption.” It will rest barely three days in the tomb; by his own power, Jesus will come forth triumphant from death, resplendent with life and glory, and “death shall no longer have dominion over him.” The Apostle tells us again that “by our baptism we have been buried with Christ so that we may die to sin”: “We were buried with him through baptism into his death.” The waters of baptism are like a sepulcher where we should leave sin behind, and from which we come forth, animated by a new life, the life of grace. The sacramental power of our baptism lasts forever. By uniting ourselves, through faith and love, to Christ in the tomb, we renew that grace of “dying to sin so as to live only for God.”

THE PRAYER ord Jesus, Lwould that I bury in your tomb all my sins, all my imperfections, all my infidelities; through the power of your death and burial, help me renounce more and more everything that separates me from you: Satan, the wisdom of the world, my self-love; by the power of your resurrection, grant that like you, I would live only for the glory of your Father. XIV: Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb