Faith Filled Friday: The Twelfth Station

For Good Friday I was going to post some pictures and video of my annual procession of the Way of the Cross over the Brooklyn Bridge, but the batteries in my camera crapped out just after I turned the camera on.  This was the 23^rd year of the March, and that surprised me.  I didn’t realize it went back that far.  I think this was my fifth year attending.  I blogged about the first time in 2014, here.   

Since I didn’t get pictures t post, I’m going to provide one last Caryll Houselander way of the cross station.  What could be more fitting for today, than the twelfth station.

Christ Dies on the Cross

To His enemies this seems to be the hour of their triumph and Christ’s defeat, but in fact it is the supreme hour of His triumph. Now when He seems to be more helpless than He has ever been before, He is in fact more powerful. When He seems to be more limited, more restricted, His love is boundless, His reach across the world to the hearts of men in all ages is infinite.

But to those who look on, how different what appears to be happening seems to what is really happening. How certain it seems that Christ has been overcome, that His plan of love for the world has failed utterly, that He Himself is a failure, His “kingdom” a pitiful delusion.

Can this be the same Christ who only three short years ago went up into another mountain and spoke to the multitudes, filling the heart of each individually with secret joy and hope?—teaching the poor their own glory, revealing the secret of his personal beatitude to each one who suffered, to each who was downtrodden or unjustly treated, showing them each the reality of the poetry of life, the inwardness of the kingdom which was already theirs if they could receive it with simplicity and the values of unspoilt children?

Did he not tell them, and did they not believe, that their very poverty clothed them, not in drab, worn garments, but in those that, seen by the true vision, are richer than Solomon’s robes, lovelier than the iridescent lilies growing in the fields of Palestine?

Did he not convince them that if their hearts were pure, the kingdom of heaven was already theirs—and he himself, who strewed the wild flowers under their feet and gave them the morning star, their king?

But now on this other mountainside how different everything seems to be. What hope is there now for them? Their king is poorer than any of them. He is stripped of all that he has; his crown is a ridiculous crown of thorns; he has nothing left of his own, not even a grave to receive his dead body. Far from being clothed in splendour that rivals the glory of Solomon, or beauty that rivals the wild flowers, his own natural beauty is hidden under wounds and bruises.

“He has no comeliness whereby men shall know him.”

He has never seemed so helpless as He seems now, not even as a little infant in Bethlehem.

The hands that could raise the dead to life with a touch, could heal the sick and give sight to the blind, are nailed to the hard wood: unforgettable, stiffening in death. The feet that blessed the delicate grass by their touch, that walked on the swiftly moving waves of the storm at sea, are fastened down to the rough trunk and held still. The eyes that could see into the depths of the soul are darkening with the blindness of death. The tongue that spoke the words of eternal love is swollen with thirst, and stiffened in death. The heart of the man who is love is turning to a small, hard stone that a man could hold in his hand!

More bitter than all His other suffering is the desolation of His soul, His own unutterable loneliness, the sense of being wholly unsupported by any love, emptied out, forsaken even by God: “. . . and at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’” (Mark xv. 34).

He seemed to be quite alone, quite defeated, dying a useless death at the end of a useless life, the tragic life of a poor deluded dreamer who, because of his fondest delusion that his love for the world could save it, had come to a still more tragic death, to die alone, an object only of scorn or pity—not even hated now, since now he is powerless—beaten. Men hate only when they fear.

“The passers-by blasphemed against him, tossing their heads. ‘Come now,’ they said, ‘thou who wouldst destroy the temple and build it up in three days, rescue thyself; come down from that cross, if thou art the Son of God.’”

But Christ would not come down from the cross—“I, if I be lifted up,” He said, “will draw all men to me.” Now He had done just that, He had drawn all men to Him because He was dying all of their deaths for them; He was giving Himself to them in death, so that in their turn they would die His death, with His courage, His love, His power to redeem.

From that moment when He bowed His head, crying out: “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” and died, everyone indwelt by Him to the end of time would die His death, with His power to heal and strengthen and redeem themselves and other men by their dying.

He came to the tremendous mystery of His death alone, He felt forsaken even by God; but from that moment until the end of time, no Christian man or woman or child will die alone. Each one will die Christ’s death, their hands in His hands, their feet folded upon His feet, the last beat of their hearts the beat of His heart; and because He has made their deaths His own, theirs too will have the power of His to save themselves and those whom they love.

Houselander, Caryll. The Way of the Cross (pp. 79-82). Angelico Press. Kindle Edition.

Let me leave you with this glorious hymn that is so fitting for today, “What Wondrous Love is This.”

WE ADORE YOU, O CHRIST, AND WE PRAISE YOU, BECAUSE BY YOUR HOLY CROSS YOU HAVE REDEEMED THE WORLD.

Faith Filled Friday: The Fifth Station

Since there was such a positive reception to the excerpt from Caryll Houselander's The Way of the Cross last week, I decided to provide another.  The previous post is here   and you can read about the book here. 

All fourteen stations are fascinating, but there is something a little more disturbing about the fifth station, the one where Simon the Cyrene is forced to help Jesus carry the cross up to Calvary.   He was just walking by.  He had no intention of following the macabre procession.  He didn’t know Jesus.  It’s almost as if we were walking down the street, turned a corner, and came across a robbery, and somehow got thrown into the drama.  There is such significance in it and Houselander does a great job of bringing it all out.

Simon the Cyrene Helps Jesus Carry the Cross

 He is labouring under the cross. It is too much for Him to carry alone. Everyone can see that, but no one offers to help Him. Someone, then, must be forced. The soldiers seize upon Simon of Cyrene. It has, or he thinks it has, nothing to do with him. He was simply about his own business in Jerusalem. It seems to him mere chance that he met this tragic procession—an unlucky chance for him, but there it is! He is made to take up the load and help this man, a stranger to him, and whom he supposes to be a criminal on the way to his execution.

Really there is no chance in the incident. It is something planned by God from eternity to show men the way of Christ’s love: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” It means that no one is meant to suffer alone. No one is meant to carry his own cross without some other human being to help him.

Again Christ is proving to the world that He has come to live the life of all ordinary men on the simplest human terms. Now as He accepts the reluctant help of Simon—accepts it because He perforce must, and yet in His humility gratefully—He is showing each one of us whom He will indwell, what he asks of us and what He wants us to give to one another.

A man who claims to be self-sufficient and not to need any other man’s help in hardship and suffering has no part in Christ. The pride which claims to be independent of human sympathy and practical help from others is unchristian. We are here to help one another.

We are here to help Christ in one another. We are here to help Christ blindly. We must know Him by faith, not by vision. We must help Him not only in those who seem to be Christlike, but more in those in whom Christ is hidden: in the most unlikely people, in those whom the world condemns. It is in them that Christ, indwelling man, suffers most; it is in them He cannot carry His cross today without the help of other men.

Houselander, Caryll. The Way of the Cross (pp. 31-32). Angelico Press. Kindle Edition.

How many times do we come cross Christ in our daily activities?  How many times do you help the person who can’t carry his cross by himself?  Helping the elderly is the first thing that comes to my mind, but anyone in accident, or disabled, or a child can easily be overwhelmed by immediate circumstances.  When you do so, you are Simon called to help Christ.

Here’s a clip from the movie, The Passion of the Christ that dramatizes the scene.

WE ADORE YOU, O CHRIST, AND WE PRAISE YOU, BECAUSE BY YOUR HOLY CROSS YOU HAVE REDEEMED THE WORLD.

Faith Filled Friday: The First Station

Excerpt from Caryll Hollander’s The Way of the Cross.  You can read about the book at last week’s post, here.  

Jesus is Condemned to Death

“BEHOLD THE MAN!”

He is a man of sorrows. He is covered in bruises and stripes. He is made a laughing stock. He is crowned with a crown of thorns. A reed is put into His hand for a sceptre, a tattered soldier’s cloak is thrown over His naked shoulders. His eyes are blindfolded. His face is covered with spittings. He is bound like a dangerous criminal. His own people have chosen a murderer before Him. His friends have forsaken Him. The kiss of treason burns on His cheek.

“He has no comeliness whereby we shall desire him!”

“He is a worm and no man, the reproach of men and the outcast of the people.”

And He is condemned to death.

“Away with him! Away with him! Crucify him!” 

“Behold the man!”

“Behold the Son of God!”

Behold the man abiding in mankind!

He had put on our humanity. He has put you on—and me. He had covered Himself with our shame, blindfolded His eyes with our blindness, bound Himself with our slavery to self. He is bruised by our falls. He bleeds from our wounds. He sheds our tears. He has made Himself weak with our weakness. Faint with our faintheartedness. He is going to die our death.

All men are condemned to die, but He is condemned to die not only His own death, but yours and mine, and that of every man whom He will indwell through all the ages to come.

“Behold the Son of God!”

“This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased!”

He alone, of all men born, need not have died; but because things are as they are, because we have to pay the price of our sins, and our life on this earth must inevitably be a journey through suffering to death, Christ has chosen to give Himself to every man who will receive Him, so that each man who wills can tread that road with the feet of Christ, and at the end of it he can, if he wills, die not his own death but Christ’s.

That is why death is the choice of Divine Love: “Dost thou doubt that if I call on my Father, even now, he will send more than twelve legions of angels to my side? But how, were it so, should the scriptures be fulfilled, which have prophesied that all must be as it is?” (Matt. xxvi.53–54). His bound hands hold back the legions of angels.

He has chosen our impotence in order to give us the power of His love, our weakness to give us His strength, our fear to give us His courage, our ignominy to give us His majesty, our pain to give us His peace, our wounds to give us His power to heal, our dying to give us His life; our interdependence that we may give Him to one another.

“Behold the man.”

In Him behold mankind!  (pp. 6-8)

All quotes taken from the 2015 reprint edition by Angelico Press, which is a republication of the original work published by Sheed and Ward, Inc., 1955.

And here is a wonderful exegesis on the first station by a young friar from my favorite of the religious orders, a Matthew Jarvis OP from the Dominican Order, Province of England.

Faith Filled Friday: The Way of the Cross by Caryll Houselander, Via Crucis

I have seen many a devotional passage from Caryll Houslander, but this is the first book I’ve read by her.  This was a perfect Lenten read with some of her characteristic insights and lovely prose.  Houselander was a British Catholic artist, mystic, and writer during the first half of the twentieth century.  In The Way of the Cross, she walks us through the Stations of the Cross, each chapter being one of the stations.  At each station she puts you in the scene of Christ’s suffering, moves to some theological point, connects that station to our lives, and concludes with a prayer poem.  In what stands for an introduction, titled Via Crucis, she walks you into a church where a group is praying the Stations.

Three o’clock on a grey afternoon. Outside, a steady drizzle of rain; inside the church, an odd motley of people.

A smartly dressed woman, side by side with one who is shabby and threadbare. A boy and girl who appear to be in love. A very old man, so bowed that he is permanently in an attitude of adoration. A stalwart young soldier whose polished buttons glitter like gems in the candlelight. A couple of students, shabbily but elegantly dressed in corduroys and bright scarves, rubbing shoulders with a gaunt, round-shouldered man who looks like a tramp. A sprinkle of small children. And behind them all, as if he felt himself to be the modern Publican, though there is no reason why he should, a thickset, square-shouldered business man. And a few seconds before the priest, in come a couple of rather flustered little nuns, like birds shaking the rain off their black feathers.

What a diversity of places these people must have come from—luxury flats, tenements, small boardinghouses, institutions, barracks, studios, colleges, doss houses, schools, offices, convents. What sharp contrast there must be between their different lives and circumstances! But they seem to be strangely at one here, gathered round a crude coloured picture on the wall of the church, “The First Station of the Cross,” and it seems to come naturally to them to join together in the same prayer:

“We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.”

“Because by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.”

The tender rhythmic prayer that has been on the lips of men all through the ages is repeated fourteen times as they move slowly around the church, following the priest from station to station, until they reach the last of all, “Jesus Laid in the Tomb.” (pp. 1-2)

All quotes taken from the 2015 reprint edition by Angelico Press, which is a republication of the original work published by Sheed and Ward, Inc., 1955.

Houselander goes on to explain what the Stations are and their significance, but she ultimately comes to connect them in us:

Different though each human being is from every other, uniquely his own though each one’s experience is, there are certain inevitable experiences which are common to all men and from which none can escape. One of these is death. Another is love. Every human being alive is on the road to death. Every one is capable of love for someone, even if it is only for himself, and the price of love, perhaps particularly of self-love, is suffering. But the power of love, and this does not apply to self-love, is to transform suffering, to heal its inevitable wounds.

Now it is easier to understand what it is that brings the incongruous motley of people together to “make the Way of the Cross.” Each one meets himself on the Via Crucis, which is the road through death to life. In Christ he finds the meaning of his own suffering, the power of his own capacity for love. He finds the explanation of himself in Our Lady too, the Mother of Christ in whose soul He is formed perfectly, as He was once formed perfectly in her body. And in those others too, who are taking part in the Passion of the Son of Man—Simon of Cyrene, Magdalen and John, Veronica, the Women of Jerusalem, the Good Thief, the Centurion, the man who lent his tomb, the scattered apostles who crept back, and ran to the empty tomb on the morning of resurrection. Those in whom, through grace and mercy, Christ is being formed, and growing from the darkness of the buried seed to His full flowering.  (pp. 4-5)

I’m going to try to give you a sample on each Friday coming up to Easter from a particular station.  During Lent I try to pray the Stations every night, with a success rate of two out of three nights.  I encourage everyone to pray them, even if it’s occasional.  I probably get the most spiritual uplift from praying the Stations than from any other single prayer or devotional.  If you don’t know how to pray them, you can read about it here.  If it’s easier to do it in community, I’m sure your local Catholic Church prays them frequently during Lent, but there are many youtube clips to pray along to.  They tend to be filled with meditations that you want to simplify.  It doesn’t need take more than fifteen minutes.  Here is one.