Let me receive Your forgiveness and mercy.
The second Servant song shapes our reflection today
as we watch that amazing dinner scene on Tuesday of this passion week.
We experience the pain of His knowing
that He will be betrayed and denied.
Yet, the hour He is about to face is the hour of His Glory.
And He promises that where He is going, we will surely follow.
Our desire is to celebrate the gift being offered us.
It is too little, he says,
for you to be my servant,
to raise up the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the survivors of Israel.
I will make you a light to the nations,
that my salvation may reach
to the ends of the earth.
Isaiah 49
The Seventh Station:
Jesus Falls A Second Time
My Jesus, one of the beautiful qualities the people admired in You was Your strength in time of ridicule – Your ability to rise above the occasion. But now, You fall a second time – apparently conquered by the pain of the Cross. People who judged You by appearances made a terrible mistake. What looked like weakness was unparalleled strength!
I often judge by appearances and how wrong I am most of the time. The world judges entirely by this fraudulent method of discerning. It looks down upon those who apparently have given their best and are now in need. It judges the poor as failures, the sick as useless and the aged as a burden. How wrong that kind of judgment is in the light of your second fall! Your greatest moment was Your weakest one. Your greatest triumph was in failure. Your greatest act of love was in desolation. Your greatest show of power was in that utter lack of strength that threw You to the ground.
Weak and powerful Jesus, give me the grace to see beyond what is visible and be more aware of Your Wisdom in the midst of weakness. Give the aged, sick, handicapped, retarded, deaf and blind the fruit of joy so they may ever be aware of the Father’s gift and the vast difference between what the world sees and what the Father sees that they may glory in their weakness so the power of God may be manifest.
Amen
The Eighth Station:
Jesus Speaks to the Holy Women
My Jesus, I am amazed at Your compassion for others in Your time of need. When I suffer, I have a tendency to think only of myself but You forgot Yourself completely. When You saw the holy women weeping over Your torments, You consoled them and taught them to look deeper into Your Passion. You wanted them to understand that the real evil to cry over was the rejection You suffered from the Chosen people – a people set apart from every other nation, who refused to accept God’s Son.
The Act of Redemption would go on and no one would ever be able to take away Your dignity as Son of God but the evil, greed, jealousy and ambition in the hearts of those who should have recognised You was the issue to grieve over. To be so close to God made man and miss Him completely was the real crime.
My Jesus, I fear I do the same when I strain gnats and then swallow camels – when I take out the splinter in my brother’s eye and forget the beam in my own. It is such a gift – this gift of faith. It is such a sublime grace to possess Your own Spirit. Why haven’t I advanced in holiness of life? I miss the many disguises you take upon Yourself and see only people, circumstances and human events, not the loving hand of the Father guiding all things. Help all those who are discouraged, sick, lonely and old to recognise Your Presence in their midst.
Amen
Stations by Mother Angelica
AnaStpaul 