Twelfth Station - Jesus dies on the cross

You die, with a cry that would be incomprehensible for a God clad in power. The very cry that is lost among the blind and deaf tumult of the crowd, a cry of majesty, for all who follow you from below. And then the cry is transformed into the groan of that little girl, who has lost the strength to struggle on.

And you, God, die, leaving to later the silence of those wounds which no longer pain you… while the wail of impotence, which today was unable to even find a morsel of food, the persistent suffocating hardship of those, who flee the hatred of the persecutor, spreads like a night, over the ashes.

But I hear it no longer. The fury of the wind and of the sword has swept everything away, and I can no longer recognise there has ever been any life there. Because your death, oh God, is all death, and all cries, and all wounds…

It is time to rise! But all I can do is let myself fall, and hide myself in your wounds, as far in as I can, hopeless… You have died, my God, and then, your cry reaches the heart of the earth, which shakes… Though maybe it is the whole universe. All I can feel is a tingling in my feet, which doesn’t stop. The beating of drums that cannot stop this day, this night… 

And little by little, the rocks split open, and all the tombs are uncovered, and all the paths are lost to me, and I am forced to raise my eyes… to the infinite. And then I see her, running, laughing in the wind, jumping through a meadow full of flowers and butterflies, my little hope!

And finally, I understand, that you died so that hatred would die, so that evil will never again triumph over the earth, and so that wrath may lie buried for ever. 

Therefore, always, you die, forever, and nothing can now extinguish my little hope in this world. Now, let me lie here, hidden in your wounds, because in them you continue to triumph, with that majestic cry, over all the darkness of the world!

Prayer

God, Our Father, Lord of all life, on this day of the holiest of loves, you allow us to contemplate the death of your Beloved Son, and you invite us to discover the power of hope in the wounds of all who are crucified, lift up our downtrodden hearts, renew our presence among the neediest, with faith and hope, and give us the certainty of that faith which triumphs over the world.

 In the name of Jesus, our Lord, who is God with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit.