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When you prayed in the garden, Lord, and the heaviness pressed all around you from the weight of all we had had done and would do echoing in the quiet night, and you knelt there while the full moon's light peaked through the olive trees, Silent witness alone that sees how you were sweating blood in the depths of your grief. How heavy did today weigh on your shoulders, Lord, How this war-torn world of anger and tears mad with lust, demands and fears Despising you for what you said about right -- Choosing the darkness and calling it light,...

Pieta No day like this, ever. Did you sit there, Mother, When they laid Him in your lap And remember the angel with his words of promise, And remember the words of Simeon with his words of warning, And remember your Son nestled in your lap, Small and warm and new, Smiling in the sun? As you brushed the blood soaked hair off His forehead, And washed his face, one last time, Counting every bruise, mark, wound, Did you think of all the times of danger, Fleeing with Him next to your breast On the road to Egypt? Or how...

The Crowning Once they mocked Him with a crown of twisted thorns, the soldiers there, a game to amuse themselves while they passed the time, to prove how secure they were in this foreign land how much stronger, how much in control. No threat, He, beaten, bloody, bound, an interesting toy to play with in the morning. Now they mock Him with a crown of twisted words, those who choose to despise Him, soliders in a different war, yet still in need of games to amuse themselves with, to prove how much wiser, stronger, smarter they are, how they can...

Jesus on the Cross How hard the wood rubbed against your bruised and bleeding back, how hard the iron that made your arms throb with excruciating pain, how the thorns dug in when you held your head fully up, a symphony of pain whose depths I can only vaguely imagine, how hard it was to see the Magdalene there, weeping her heart out, your aunt, and especially, your mother, who watched every moment, sharing your pain as you moved into the darkness of death, but could any of these compare to the wall of separation from your Father that our...

How hard that final rise was, Step by step up the hill, how hard you had to cling to life, how hard you had to cling to consciousness, hard hard each breath, each jarring step. Even with Simeon carrying your cross, the ground came swoop up, and you tasted the dust, felt the pavement one last time, falling one last time to panic the centurion into thinking you would die before they could kill you. Only your burning love burning like an eternal flame echoing down the ages stood you up that last time, pushing away the effects of shock,...

The Third Sorrowful Mystery: Jesus is crowned with thorns and mocked The Crowning The dirty soldier's cloak, a proper Roman scarlet is draped over his bleeding raw back, the fabric growing darker wherever it touches the handiwork the soldiers left behind in long red stripes still bloody. A game he has become in their hands. For the soldiers bored, violent children of a violent culture, he is a doll to take their frustrations out against everything they hate about this dusty foreign place filled with strange people. They crown him with their disdain, hate, fear, wrapped amid the thorns. And...

The Second Sorrowful Mystery: Jesus is Scourged The First Blow The whip travels in a descending arc, three thongs carrying weights of lead double headed cargo to increase the impact. The hand that wields is the rough and calloused hand of a soldier doing a duty, unknowing, uncaring of whose back it was in front of him. Perhaps as he swings, he thinks of all the looks of disdain, the women who turn away, the men who spit when he passes and they think he does not see, this strange people with their strange hates and strange language and strange...

Two Gardens In one garden, the lie was chosen over the will of God, and naturegroaned under the curse and the grief and the countless tears of mankind that followed. In one garden, quietly, one full moon nightthe will of God was chosen over the lie and nature knew the promise of healing that would free a woeful mankind of its tears had begun in the unfathomable grief of the one who said yes.

Meditation on Christ's Passion When you prayed in the garden, Lord, and the heaviness pressed all around you as the full moon's light peaked through the olive trees, and your apostles snored in the shadows, and you sweated blood in the depths of your grief, how heavy did today weigh on your shoulders, with a war-torn world, mad with bloodlust, despising your peace, hot with hatred and selfish fulfilment sometimes done in the name of God, or done in the name of self, careless with all you have taught? When they tied you to the pillar, Lord, and scourged you...