2021 Holy Week Reflections from The Stations of the Cross

2021 Holy Week Reflections from
                       The Stations of the Cross
                     You may like to pray a short stations Click here

Monday: Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, betrayed by Judas and arrested;
                                   Peter denies Jesus
                                   Jesus is let down by his friends. We’ve all been there:
                                   let down by others, letting others down ourselves. We
                                   know the feelings of hurt when we are let down, the
                                   feelings of shame when we let others down.
                                   Jesus was hurt by the disciples falling asleep while he
                                   prayed. “Could you not watch with me one brief hour?”
                                   he asked. Jesus was hurt by Judas handing him over to
                                   the soldiers. “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of Man with
                                   a kiss?” he inquired. Jesus was hurt by Peter denying
                                   that he’d ever known Jesus. “Before the cock crows
                                   twice you will deny me three times” he prophesied.
                                   If anyone ever feels he has wandered too far from God,
                                   has fallen too far from grace, has let God down so badly
that he dare not approach to ask for forgiveness, let that one look at these three
stations, these three times when Jesus was let down. We let down Jesus all the time,
from ignorance, from weakness, from our own deliberate fault. He is neither surprised
nor condemning. If anyone opens their heart to admit they have let God down, then
their heart is open to Jesus’ offer of a way back.

Tuesday: Jesus is condemned by the Sanhedrin; Jesus is judged by Pilate
If anyone thinks that the church shouldn’t get involved in political issues these two
stations should make them think otherwise. Jesus was condemned by the Sanhedrin
because everything he did and said shewed that the elected leaders were maltreating
the people, were abusing their power, were playing politics with people’s lives. No
wonder the Sanhedrin couldn’t wait to get rid of him. Jesus’ new commandment, which
we celebrate on Maundy Thursday, his novum mandatum, is to love one another. Loving
people is a political issue because loving people should
shape our decisions so that everyone is cared for, none
is privileged because of their background, gender or
colour, none is exploited because of their class, sexuality
or race. People who stand up for right and stand up for
people’s rights are divisive, and sometimes it takes an
unholy alliance, like that between the Sanhedrin and
Pilate, to silence them. However, as we recall Jesus
before the Sanhedrin, Jesus before Pilate, over two
thousand years after the event, we might doubt that any
political alliance can really silence truth. Truth is
political; pray God that politics may become truthful.

Wednesday: Jesus is scourged and crowned with thorns; Jesus carries the cross;
Simon of Cyrene helps Jesus to carry the cross; Jesus meets the women of
Jerusalem
                        Today we see three contrasting attitudes to Jesus. The soldiers
                        who mock him, Simon who helps him, and the women who moan
                        to him. The soldiers have been so brutalised by their lives and
                        work that they cannot have compassion on the man whom they
                        must punish. The women at first appear to be the opposite of
                        the soldiers, they empathise with Jesus, they suffer with him. Or
                        do they? Is not the truth rather that in the face of his suffering
                        they take refuge in their own suffering, wailing over the problems
                        they face and will face when Jesus dies. Only Simon of Cyrene
                        lifts the burden from Jesus, and he apparently not willingly, for he
                        was dragged onto the street to carry the cross by a soldier trying
                        to keep to schedule and get Jesus up to Golgotha on time. Any
                        of the people there: soldier, politician, priest, people, disciples,
family, friend, any one of them could have come to help, but only one did. And although
Simon did not take up his task joyfully, yet his actions did help Jesus.

Thursday: Jesus promises the kingdom to the
penitent thief; Jesus on the cross, his mother
and his friend.
Even as Jesus dies he cares for those around him.
“You will be with me in paradise”; “Woman, behold
you son; man, behold your mother.” It is not easy to
gaze on Jesus’ pain in Holy Week, nor is it ever easy
to look beyond the “safe” pain of the Gospel stories,
Passion Cantatas, the special services, to look
beyond the historic pain commemorated in church
and to look out to the pain of the world. But Jesus
looked beyond his pain to the pain of those around
him, and did something about it.

                     Friday: Jesus is crucified; Jesus dies.
                     In the modern western world we are not good at talking about
                     death. We shy away from it. We might say that we want to die at
                     home, but in the end most of us will die in hospital or nursing
                     home, places set up to deal with the muck and messiness of the
                     end. This past year of Covid trauma has brought stories of death
                     to our television screens and newspapers, to radios and podcasts,
                     maybe even into our own lives. We don’t like it, we don’t even like
                     to say it. People “pass” (these days they don’t even “pass away”,
                     just “pass”) and we weep and worry. Death is terrible and nothing
                     can change that, but today we remember that no-one dies alone,
                     for Jesus has died for the whole world.

Holy Saturday: Jesus is laid in the tomb
Nothing much happens in a tomb. Only dead people go into tombs, and they can’t go of
their own volition, nor do anything when they get there. And yet tombs are necessary,
we have to have somewhere to place dead people; to leave the dead lying in the streets
is one of the terrible tragedies of war, one of the crimes
of hate against humanity So, Jesus was laid in the
tomb. An act of love from two secret admirers, two
sneaking disciples, two people who’d dared to hope, but
hadn’t dared to act before. Now it’s too late. Their only
act is to give him a tomb once he’s dead. But in that
tomb, while all his Jewish brethren waited a Sabbath
rest, Jesus did not rest. He harried hell, he broke the
power of sin, the world, and the devil, he forced a path
through the kingdom of death which can never be
closed, so that all who will be laid in their own tombs in
their own time (whether too early or too late), may
follow him through death to eternal life. Only Jesus can
do this. Only he, shut alone in the tomb, can break out
of the stranglehold of the tomb. We must sit outside
and wait.

Images:
Monday      (Orazio Borgianni: Agony in the Garden. Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig)
Tuesday     (Il Tintoretto: Christ before Pilate Sculoa di San Rocco, Venice)
Wednesday   (Lucas Cranach the Elder: Christ crowned with thorns. Private collection)
Thursday    (Pieter Lastman: The Crucifixion. Rembrandthuis, Amsterdam)
Friday      (Diego Rodríguez da Silva y Velázquez: Christ on the Cross. Museo del Prado, Madrid)
Saturday    (Rogier van der Weyden: Entombment. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.