 
ELEVENTH, TWELFTH AND THIRTEENTH STATIONS OF THE CROSS
  On Good Friday in 2000, the Holy Father led the Via Crucis meditations with his own words while leading the faithful on the traditional Papal Way of the Cross. His deep spirituality, renewed by a spontaneous visit to Mount Calvary, within the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre during his "Jubilee Journey" to the Holy Land last year is an inspiration we want to share with our readers.
A Plenary Indulgence is attached to this devotion according to article 194 of the Raccolta.
Stabat Mater:
Make me feel as you have felt;
make my soul to glow and melt
with the love of Christ our Lord.
11. Jesus is nailed to the Cross
We adore you, O Lord, and we praise You. Because by Your holy cross, You
have redeemed the world. (genuflect or make the sign of the cross)
MEDITATION: Lord Jesus, I can never doubt Your great love for me when I
see You crucified. Help me to see Your cross as the great sign of Your
love for me.
"They tear holes in my hands and my feet; I can count every one of my bones" (Ps 21:17-18). The words of the Prophet are fulfilled. The execution begins. The torturers' blows crush the hands and feet of the Condemned One against the wood of the Cross. The nails are driven violently into his wrists. Those nails will hold the condemned man as He hangs in the midst of the inexpressible torments of His agony. In His body and His supremely sensitive spirit, Christ suffers in a way beyond words.
With him there are crucified two real criminals, one on his right, the other on his left. The prophecy is fulfilled: "He was numbered among the transgressors" (Isaiah 53:12).
Once the torturers raise the Cross, there will begin an agony that will last three hours. This word too must be fulfilled: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to Myself" (John 12:32).
What is it that "draws" us to the Condemned One in agony on the Cross? Certainly the sight of such intense suffering stirs compassion. But compassion is not enough to lead us to bind our very life to the One Who hangs on the Cross.
How is it that, generation after generation, this appalling sight has drawn countless hosts of people who have made the Cross the hallmark of their faith? Hosts of men and women who for centuries have lived and given their lives looking to this sign?
From the Cross, Christ draws us by the power of love, divine Love, which did not recoil from the total gift of self; infinite Love, which on the tree of the Cross raised up from the earth the weight of Christ's body, to counterbalance the weight of the first sin; boundless Love, which has utterly filled every absence of love and allowed humanity to find refuge once more in the arms of the merciful Father.
May Christ lifted high on the Cross draw us too, the men and women of the new millennium! In the shadow of the Cross, let us "walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God" (Ephesians 5:2).
PRAYER
O Christ lifted high, O Love crucified, fill our hearts with Your love, that we may see in Your Cross the sign of our redemption and, drawn by Your wounds, we may live and die with You, Who live and reign with the Father and the Spirit, now and for ever.
R. Amen.
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be
Stabat Mater:
Holy Mother, pierce me through;
in my heart each wound renew
of my Saviour crucified.
12. Jesus dies on the Cross
We adore you, O Lord, and we praise You. Because by Your holy cross, You
have redeemed the world. (genuflect or make the sign of the cross)
MEDITATION: Lord Jesus, I can never doubt Your great love for me when I
see You crucified. Help me to see Your cross as the great sign of Your
love for me.
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). At the height of His Passion, Christ does not forget man, especially those who are directly responsible for His suffering. Jesus knows that more than anything else man needs love; he needs the mercy which at this moment is being poured out on the world.
"Truly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43). This is how Jesus replies to the plea of the criminal hanging on his right: "Jesus, remember me when You come into Your kingdom" (Luke 23:42). The promise of a new life. This is the first fruit of the Passion and imminent Death of Christ. A word of hope to man.
At the foot of the Cross stood Mary, and beside her the disciple, John the Evangelist. Jesus says: "Woman, behold your son!" and to the disciple: "Behold your mother!" (John 19:26-27). "And from that moment the disciple took her to his own home" (John 19:27). This is His bequest to those dearest to His heart. His legacy to the Church. The desire of Jesus as He dies is that the maternal love of Mary should embrace all those for whom He is giving His life, the whole of humanity.
Immediately after, Jesus cries out: "I am thirsty" (John 19:28). A word which describes the dreadful burning which consumes His whole body. It is the one word which refers directly to His physical suffering.
Then Jesus adds: "My God, My God, why have You abandoned Me?" (Matthew 27:46; cf. Psalms 22:2). These words of the Psalm are His prayer. Despite their tone, these words reveal the depths of His union with the Father.
In the last moments of His life on earth, Jesus thinks of the Father. From this moment on, the dialogue will only be between the dying Son and the Father Who accepts His sacrifice of love.
When the ninth hour comes, Jesus cries out: "It is accomplished!" (John 19:30). Now the work of the redemption is complete. The mission, for which He came on earth, has reached its goal.
The rest belongs to the Father: "Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit" (Luke 23:46). And having said this, He breathed his last. "The curtain of the temple was torn in two..." (Matthew 27:5 1). The "Holy of Holies" of the Jerusalem Temple is opened at the moment when it is entered by the Priest of the New and Eternal Covenant.
PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, in the moment of Your agony You were not indifferent to humanity's fate, and with Your last breath You entrusted to the Father's mercy the men and women of every age, with all their weaknesses and sins. Fill us and the generations yet to come with Your Spirit of love, so that our indifference will not render vain in us the fruits of Your death. To You, crucified Jesus, the wisdom and the power of God, be honor and glory for ever and ever.
R. Amen.
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be
Stabat Mater:
She looked upon her sweet Son,
saw Him hang in desolation,
till His spirit forth He sent.
13. Jesus is taken down from the Cross and placed in the arms of His Blessed Mother
We adore you, O Lord, and we praise You. Because by Your holy cross, You
have redeemed the world. (genuflect or make the sign of the cross)
MEDITATION: Lord Jesus, seeing Your body taken from the cross reminds me
how fearful I am of letting go of my own life. I am frightened when I
think of being unimportant, useless, and helpless. Help me to place my
life in Your hands.
In the arms of His Mother they have placed the lifeless body of the Son. The Gospels say nothing of what she felt at that moment. It is as though by Their silence the Evangelists wished to respect her sorrow, her feelings and her memories. Or that they simply felt incapable of expressing them. It is only the devotion of the centuries that has preserved the figure of the "Pietà", providing Christian memory with the most sorrowful image of the ineffable bond of love which blossomed in the Mother's heart on the day of the Annunciation and ripened as she waited for the birth of her divine Son. That love was revealed in the cave at Bethlehem and was tested already during the Presentation in the Temple. It grew deeper as Mary stored and pondered in her heart all that was happening (cf. Luke 2:51).
Now this intimate bond of love must be transformed into a union which transcends the boundary between life and death.
And thus it will be across the span of the centuries: people pause at Michelangelo's statue of the Pietà, they kneel before the image of the loving and sorrowful Mother in the Church of the Franciscans in Krakow, before the Mother of the Seven Sorrows, Patroness of Slovakia, they venerate Our Lady of Sorrows in countless shrines in every part of the world. And so they learn the difficult love which does not flee from suffering, but surrenders trustingly to the tenderness of God, for Whom nothing is impossible (cf. Luke 1:37).
PRAYER
Salve, Regina, Mater misericordice; vita dulcedo et spes nostra, salve. Ad te clamamus... illos tuos misericordes oculos ad nos converte et Iesum, benedictumfructum ventris tui, nobis post hoc exilium ostende.
Implore for us the grace of faith, hope and charity, so that we, like you, may stand without flinching beneath the Cross until our last breath. To your Son, Jesus, our Saviour, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, all honor and glory for ever and ever.
R. Amen.
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be
HOLY SATURDAY: Station Fourteen: Jesus is laid in the tomb
For the shorter meditative group of lessons on the full Stations of the Cross, see WAY OF THE CROSS
For previous meditative Stations composed by the Holy Father, see:
1. Jesus is condemned to death
2. Jesus willingly takes up His Cross
3. Jesus falls the First Time
4. Jesus meets His Blessed Mother
5. Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus carry His Cross
6. Veronica wipes the face of Jesus
7. Jesus falls the Second Time
8. Jesus comforts the woman of Jerusalem
9. Jesus falls the Third Time
10. Jesus is stripped of His garments and given gall to drink
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April 12, 2001
volume 12, no. 102
HIS HOLINESS' WAY OF THE CROSS
www.DailyCatholic.org
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