STATIONS OF THE CROSS
Seascale Text

If desired, an unsentimental repeated prayer may follow “Lord, graciously hear us” after each station.

Prologue

Lord Jesus, today we are to follow your journey from Pilate’s judgement seat to Calvary and the tomb. Help us to offer our own little crucifixions in reparation for our sins, and for the crucifixions we have inflicted on you in other people through our selfishness, greed, pride or thoughtlessness; yet not in agonising over these faults but resolving to recognise and resist them, through your grace, in the days to come.

Pilate knew that Jesus was innocent of any crime. He may have thought it better to let one man be killed unjustly than to risk many deaths in the threatened riot - an understandable conclusion, according to worldly wisdom, but it clearly worried him.

Lord, may we always be aware that however necessary human reason may be within its capability, it is easily misled by ignorance or corrupted by our own selfish desires. In whatever dilemmas may face us, help us to reject the easier but flawed way out, and instead seek and follow the guidance of your loving law.

Jesus was condemned not only to die but to carry the instrument of his death to the place of execution, a torture in itself, especially after the routine brutal flogging inflicted beforehand to bruise and tear his back.

If duty or circumstance, Lord, ever obliges us to inflict mental or physical pain on others, remind us to limit it to what is necessary for the purpose; may we never enhance it for our own satisfaction.

When we carry a burden for someone, we can bear it more easily if we know that the effort is appreciated. Jesus carried his cross for all of us, but how grateful are we? Never mind for now the millions who have never heard of him, or having heard have rejected the message as nonsense: has our own ingratitude added the ounce that pushed the load beyond Jesus’s strength?

Lord, help us to remember always what we owe you even if we cannot realise how great it is; never to increase it by carelessness or malice.

Simeon had warned Mary to expect pain through Jesus’s life and work, but had she thought how great it might be? Now realisation was forced upon her: the son she had borne, nurtured and cherished through childhood, followed perhaps through his teaching and healing ministry, here treated as the most contemptible of criminals and being tortured to death.

Holy Mother of God, pray for those compelled to watch the sufferings of their loved ones; and may we always strive to help them bear the agony as best we may, if only through prayer and sympathy.

The soldiers at last realised that the burden of the cross was too great for their prisoner, and compelled a stranger to help. Whatever he thought of it at the time, he continued to follow Jesus not only to Calvary but through later life, bringing his sons with him.

Lord, may we resist complaining when presented with unwelcome tasks, and strive to carry them out diligently and cheerfully as the way appointed for us to follow you.

Tradition has it that a woman in the crowd, struck with pity for the prisoner struggling on while half-blinded by streams of blood from the wounds in his head, risked ridicule and punishment by coming forward to wipe his face with a cloth on which was left its impression.

Lord, help us not to let diffidence or fear of consequences deter us from acts of kindness that will ease the plight of sufferers; and may such acts show your loving face to those who may not previously have seen it.

Whether through stumbling or sheer exhaustion, Jesus for a moment could not carry on, but fell again to the ground. Nevertheless he gathered what strength he could and dragged himself onward.

Lord, we stumble on through life, constantly falling in one way or another, but you never leave us lying in the dust and filth unless we choose to stay there. May we always accept your help to rise again and press on to our goal, whatever that may prove to be.

Although the crowd had yelled for Jesus to be crucified, Veronica was not the only friend there. Other women lamented his fate and condition. Maybe they would do so for all condemned criminals; maybe they recognised something special about Jesus, but in any case their sympathy must have been welcome, and in return evoked his for the calamities about to befall his people. Within forty years came famine and then the destruction of Jerusalem, with slaughter or enslavement for the populace.

Lord, let us indeed lament the part we have played in your sufferings, whether through direct offence to yourself or to others by cruelty or neglect. May we not be satisfied with a fruitless remorse easily forgotten, still less be paralysed by guilt; neither let us look upon disaster as the vengeance of a jealous god. Guide us instead to realise our own contribution to the ills of the world, and be moved to a proper care for all that you have placed in our stewardship.

Despite his determination, Jesus’s strength fails him again. Still, he rises once more and completes his journey.

Lord, we cannot know whether our journey will end in peace or pain, nor how many falls and blows may lie along the way - nor yet what consolations. Let us be content to place our feet firmly on the path set before us, and trust in you for the rest.

For execution, Jesus is stripped of what little dignity remains to him in the eyes of the crowd. But he still has the dignity of his own character; no one can take that away.

Lord, may we never stand on our imagined dignity when it impedes our duty, nor allow ourselves to demean the dignity of others, but always be ready to accept humiliation and occasions for service in whatever the course of life may bring to us.

Jesus is fastened to the cross in the most brutal and agonising way imaginable, but securely: no risk of ropes slipping or knots failing.

When the time approaches for our own death, let us not seek either to prolong unduly our stay on earth or to slip away before the appointed time, but to accept suffering and its eventual end with as good a grace as you may grant us.

It is accomplished! Jesus has finished the course that he set himself. It does not look like a triumphant conclusion, and to his friends it seems abject failure. Nevertheless the power of sin is vanquished, and Paradise promised to those however sinful who are prepared in the end to recognise and respond to him.

Lord, strengthen us whenever we are tempted to despair, especially if it should be in our dying moments. With time about to lose its hold on us, may we then join the Good Thief in his simple plea; remember us when you come into your kingdom.

Pilate, conscious no doubt of the injustice in Jesus’s execution, readily gave permission for Joseph of Arimathea to take the body for respectful burial. According to tradition, his mother was allowed a last embrace; it seems from the Gospels that she then withdrew, probably in the care of St. John to whom Jesus had entrusted her. She had done all she could for her son, and the rest was up to his friends.

Lord, when we have done all that we can usefully contribute to a particular task, give us the humility to slip quietly away and avoid impeding the work that remains.

With the Sabbath about to start, time was short; there was not enough for the proper embalming, so Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus hastily wrapped the body and placed it in an empty tomb that happened to be conveniently close. We do not understand the transformation that followed; when Jesus next appeared to human eyes, he was recognised only with difficulty and had powers beyond our comprehension.

We too are to be transformed, but into what form and service we cannot know, and speculation is idle. Whatever it may be, Lord, grant that our remaining time on earth may be a fitting preparation for it.

Our Father ...

Hail Mary ...

Glory be ...