CONCLUSION: SUNDAY!

Sunday, the day when we cannot die. ‘My Father and I keep on working’ (Jn 5: 17). The paradigm has shifted. It behoves of Saturday to rest, with Sunday, creation happens perpetually.

Send forth Thy Spirit and they shall be created…. Sunday is a day for newness, it is ever beginning, ever creating and recreating, ever renewing, ever resurrecting, no dull moment. Christianity is a religion of newness. 

The book of Genesis describes light being created on the first day of creation. ‘Let there be light’. Jesus also describes Himself as ‘the light of the world'.  Christ’s resurrection was a great paradigm.  Behold then, the ‘deathlessness’ of light! Our dry bones shall rise, it shall not rot with Friday. The Lord’s day is the first day.

If Black hole is permitted to consume the Light, it is that Black hole can be redeemed for the children of the Light. 

In The Matrix movie, after Neo had received a kiss from Trinity, the entire army of Sentinels were no more able  to affect a hair of his. Such will be our lots as we rise out of these ordeals.

Our initiation experience has come through the stations of the cross. We are now a new creation, old things have passed, behold all things have become new! (2 Cor 5:17). Let us lose our fears. No weapon fashioned against us can prosper anymore. We have known and seen Truth, not as in afterlife, but here and now!

So let us arise from hence with courage and without fear. Emmanuel. God is with us

ELEVENTH STATION: JESUS IS NAILED TO THE CROSS

This is my body (Lk 22:19). 

When the body suffers, the human natural potential is halted, and without health, our body becomes a victim of the entire force of gravity which implodes and forces us towards the zero volume and infinite density of the Blackhole, the culmination of the physical death of man.

Let us make a pilgrimage to the hospital. There, let us visit the temple of Intensive Care, the altar of Acute Assessment and the shrine of Operating Theatres, there we shall find our reason not to complain about our own prickly headache. Blessed are those who are committed to the alleviation of the sufferings of the sick, indeed they perform a Divine vocation.

You have prepared a body for me (Heb 10:5) and, this is my body (Lk 22: 19).

We shall many times be tested through body illness and sickness. The more gravity lays its claim on us, the more our faith will be tested, and the more we shall be susceptible to denial, anger and depression.

When the body suffers, we can quickly forget the Body given up for us (Lk 22:19) and desperately scramble for alternative cures to alleviate their pains, and here, suicide can be contemplated, voodoos can be consulted, astrology can be practised, fake Prophets and Pastors can be visited.

When one suffers, without the help of grace, it takes an instant to lose one’s head and bridle the voice of conscience, to bargain and give in to the devil, to accept his terms and accept his empty promises. And it is also at this very same point that our entire salvific destiny is defined.

Let us beg God to forgive the instances in which we have lost our head and patience during our bodily suffering. Let us have recourse to the True Body and Blood which is capable of saving us. 

FOURTEENTH STATION: JESUS IS BURIED IN THE TOMB

On the 7th day, God rested from his works of creation; and here on the seventh day, God is buried in the tomb. What else can happen? If God rests, creation stops, nothing exists.

Without Christ, the seventh day, for humankind, becomes a Period (full-stop) for hope, but with Christ it is indeed a period of hope.

Nietzsche concluded that God is dead, the French revolutionaries’ motive was to kill God, Stalin and Lenin perpetuated a grand plot to destroy God. And today, for many who cannot cross the bridge of Sabbath, God may yet be dead.

No amount of rationalisation can get us out of the ordeal of the seventh day, it is through the ability to remain in hope with the Madonna that the meaninglessness of our ‘Friday’ can transform, through Christ, into the meaningfulness of our ’Sunday’.

This period may be tough but Let us keep hope alive and we shall soon arrive at the reasonableness and deathlessness of ‘Sunday’. We shall soon know why, not only in the afterlife, but also here in time, because the journey to Truth is an experience. Freedom is very experiential.

THIRTEENTH STATION: JESUS IS TAKEN DOWN FROM THE CROSS AND GIVEN TO HIS MOTHER

How many deaths we must pass through to be wise, and these little deaths are a subset of the one great death which has already been won over for us on Calvary through our Baptism. The life we live now is hidden with Jesus in Christ (Col 3:3).

We shall have to pass through rivers, cross through seas and navigate through oceans of trials before we can attain our freedom. Let us sail with the Star of the Sea who can guide us from the Inferno of life, through its Purgatorio and unto the bliss of its Paradiso, where our tragedy is changed into a Divine Comedy.

The softest landing we can experience during a deep crisis, is to find ourselves in the arms of the Blessed Virgin, that is why we ask her to aid us now, and at the hour of our death in the Hail Mary. And a sword shall pierce your own soul … (Lk 2:35). Let us have recourse to Mary, the pitiful maiden who receives the dead body of her son from the cross. 

When the Crucifix becomes the Pieta, Easter can already be smelt from afar. The Crucifix and the Pieta should make their space in every home.

Albert Einstein clearly expresses the 13^th Station emotion when he noted that the years of searching in the dark for a truth that one feels but cannot express, the intense desire and the alternations of confidence and misgiving until one breaks through to clarity and understanding, are known only to him who has experienced them himself.

Pain may endure to the nights but joy cometh in the morning (Ps 30:5). It cannot get worse, things can henceforth get better. Where many without faith have fallen into despair, here let us keep hope alive. 

TWELFTH STATION: JESUS DIES ON THE CROSS

The spacelessness and timelessness of Blackholes that makes the entire creation shiver

Here, blackhole does not admit by observation, it is amongst us

Terrible it is, the day of the Lord!

The paradox of death and life

As Hawking suggested, Blackhole is not black after all

It is a Good -not Bad- Friday. With Christ, Blackhole is a good hole, Blackhole becomes a Big Bang. What is supposed to be the end is a Beginning

Faith is what is required of us. Trust and obey

Whoever believes in Me, even though he dies shall live, and he who lives and believes in Me shall never die ()

Natural light may not escape the natural Blackhole, but the Light of Christ, engages the Blackhole and transforms it into a Good hole. Death, where is thy sting? ()

The works of creation was completed in 6 days, it all ended on Friday, here works meets a dead point. Christ also finished His works of recreation on Friday. ‘It is finished’(), he cried.

The condemnation of Friday is what Christ has come to break. But without authentic faith, without real awareness, without a depth of life lived in spirit and truth, every effort of man becomes a perambulation in futility, a natural Blackhole. ‘Without me you can do nothing ‘. That is why Good Friday is the fulcrum of the entire history of man.

 ‘O blood and water which gushed forth from the heart of Jesus as a fountain of mercy for us, I trust in You’.

Death is life, even though you die, you live () smell it!

That is the origin of breakthrough from the curse of Friday.

Time, as we know it now, is an illusion,

TENTH STATION: JESUS IS STRIPPED OF HIS GARMENTS

It gets tough and scary from hence, for so should an experiential initiation be…

The word ‘Go, sell all that you have’ (Mt 19: 21), shall soon happen to us all. We shall have to, willingly or unwillingly, let go and let God. Everything perishes, why deny that, or why not willingly confront this reality? We live within the confines of change and decay. Nothing we bring to this world, nothing we shall take away from it (1Tim 6:7) It is all vanity of vanities! (Eccl 1:2).

Christ’s admonition for us to leave houses, brothers, sisters, father, mother, wife, children, or fields for His sake (Mt 19:29) is a benevolent one, because entropy is the ultimate nature of everything. Sooner or later all dependency shall go, and only Christ, who is capable of reversing entropy through the cross on Calvary, who shall remain. 

It is good spiritual practice to learn to strip oneself from all things. The money we labour for, the children we groom, the spouse we cherish, the prestige and position we strive after, even the body we protect and adore, all these shall decay, and we ourselves shall be gone. We cannot be spiritual by clinging unto these. Apart from its peak, every hierarchy of Maslow shall collapse. Ego, money, family, security all shall be stripped.

What is tougher to bear in this journey is not so much the stripping, as the fact that these ordeals often happen through human agents who slander, judge, condemn, malign and betray us. The closer those people are, the tougher it is  for us to bear!

The path of liberation is that of detachment, that is the stuff Lent is made of. Detachment is tough, but it makes us wise. Without detachment, we cannot be wise, and without wisdom, we shall remain a slave of the System, and there is more toil being a slave of the System than accepting to be stripped.

Let us ask our Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, the Star of the Sea, to help us in stripping our numerous garments. She knows how to carefully and lovingly strip us of our attachments so that this is not overtly hurting.

Our Lady (Notre Dame) of Paris, Pray for us.

NINTH STATION: JESUS FALLS THE THIRD TIME

Hypocrisy is a terrible sin (Lk 12: 1-3), scandal is a horrible malady (Mk 9: 42). Christ seriously condemned both in the scripture. But how rare in our age it is to come across a leader who walks the talk and is not a catch 22 victim of hypocrisy or scandal.

The higher one climbs the ladder of leadership -in the public, work or worship places- the more one is faced with its structural hypocrisy and scandal, and anyone who is not matured enough to deal with these human failings will either give up on the effort or join up with the failure. Few people can cope with the reality that exists at the top. The great Babylonic System thrives at the expense of this spirit of discouragement.

Every known malady is tucked up under the misery and mystery behind the 3^rd fall and only Calvary can redeem that.  The effect of the 3rd fall can cause anyone, either to abandon the journey altogether, or to continue up unto Calvary. There is a great personal loneliness experienced after any hypocrisy becomes a scandal for the redeemed and it takes great faith and effort to journey to Calvary.  

Nothing that is hidden that shall not be made known (Lk 8: 17). Be careful therefore, what you do in an age where private scandals are publicly shamed on Facebook, where deep secrets of ages past can easily be purchased for a fiver on Amazon, where any hypocrisy is only but a Twit away. Even the seal of the confessional shall be broken!

The numerous unresolved conflicts are just ways of avoiding Calvary. Neither Peter nor Paul; Francis, or Benedict; Leave, or Remain, Trump, or Obama; PDP, or APC, none of these can resolve our conflicts. Only Calvary! 

Without Calvary, there is no moving on.  Let us go willingly therefore towards Calvary to resolve our scandals and hypocrisies, or we shall be having them resolved for us over there unwillingly. The remaining 5 Stations of the Cross happen  on Calvary because our real initiation is on Calvary. Everything until now is external, the Calvary journey is more internal.

As night draws nigh then, on this Palm Sunday, let us begin this Holy Week with a resolve to embrace the only scandal worth coveting: The scandal of the cross!

EIGHT STATION: WOMEN OF JERUSALEM WEEP FOR JESUS

Jesus wept (Jn 11: 35). The women of Jerusalem wept (Lk 23:27).

Weeping is a very deep and great source of energy, especially when it transcends from sympathy into empathy. And when a woman weeps, it acquires a double potency.

This is so because the primal cause for change Within this realm is by a woman.  A woman controls the bloodline. Feminism rightly channelled can revolutionise the world, and that fact became Christ’s counsel to the women of Jerusalem.

‘Weep not for me’.  I go to open the scroll and the seven seals (Rev 5:3-5) ‘Weep for yourselves and your children’. Labour to write a good scroll and to package it with a proper seal.  

‘Do not weep for me’ (Lk 23: 28) Go back home. Charity begins at home. Do not abscond nor ignore the bloodline where Destiny has positioned you. There is a reason behind that, make the best out of it.

‘Weep for yourself …’ (Lk 23:28). Do not worry how many will be saved, simply labour your best to enter the arrow way (Lk 13: 23-24) and multitudes shall be brought to life through your freedom. Your entire ancestry is in you, awaiting their freedom through your recognition of truth.

‘Weep for your children…’ (Lk 23:28). Channel your empathy into your bloodline.  This matter, even after death. Just as Dives realised, as he thought of his family and 5 brothers as lifelines, after the futility of reaching out to Lazarus (Lk 16: 27-28).

Our ancestry still matters. Modern DNA and genetic researches are revealing how we are a composition of our past, an entire ancestral genome labouring and waiting to be free inside us. We are the salvation of the past and hope of the future.

Why look elsewhere. Let us start from home. As all shall eventually come home to roost, there shall be a woman awaiting us. Even Science is fast realising the potency of a woman’s chromosome (X) and the uselessness of a man’s chromosome (Y) which has gone with the wind.

Sometimes it is tougher along the bloodline, even Jesus’ bloodline imploded on Him, but this is the best place to start if we want to sustain our freedom.

Blessed are those who mourn, they shall be comforted.  Charity begins at home and ends abroad.

SEVENTH STATION: JESUS FALLS THE SECOND TIME

Poor human nature. We shall fall more than once. But guess what? It is through these falls, these miseries, and the recognition of our feebleness, by which his heart is attracted. He raises great edifice on mere nothingness and utter insufficiency.

If our falling and failing brings about a recognition of our weakness, and we cultivate confidence in His mercy, everything becomes gain for us. Falling by the gravity of self, Satan and sin increases our merits when we are little, and when we keep up the struggle.

Our freedom entails us digging more into our failings and hustling more to be the best version of ourselves. How can we keep aloof from sacramental confession for so long? How can we say we have got nothing to confess? Steve Jobs once counselled folly and hunger as a prerequisite to success.

Let us recognise truth (Jn 8: 32). Let us be poor in Spirit (Lk 6: 20). Humility is truth and it consists in the recognition of our nothingness, with an absolute dependence on His righteousness. His heart is the throne of mercy and the most wretched are the most welcome.

Our progress lies not in the satisfaction of our virtue, but in the recognition of our vice. He loves our littleness, not our goodness; our absolute nothingness, not our utmost righteousness.

His Sacred Heart is the abode of little ones from where the science of glorying in their infirmities  is mastered. Let us enter into this abode where we can discover the meaning of mercy and confidently repose in it.

Sanctity, according to St. Therese, does not consist in this or that practices, but in a disposition of the heart which makes one humble and little in God’s arms, conscious of one’s weakness, and confident even to audacity in the goodness of the Father.

Although we recognise the pain of our humanity, let us – like Maya Angelou - leave behind nights of terror and fear, and repose confidently in a daybreak that’s wondrously clear. Let us bring the graces our faith bestows and be the dream and hope of our world. Let us rise!

SIXTH STATION: VERONICA WIPES JESUS’ FACE

Change, they say, is the only constant, but without the courage of changers, life would be a muddled smelly pond. Just do it, wherever you are positioned, labour to find your voice and change your position.

Often, there is a certain unwritten law, an unseen barrier, a real but hidden boundary, developed by the rule of conformity, which mutes people and keeps them a slave of the System. The System needs massive slavery to function and slavery is borne of lack of confidence and the inability to find one’s voice. Do not live others lives, struggle to find your destined purpose!

Can any good come out of the Good guy, I mean, those who would conform and live entirely according to the dictates of the System? If you are not truthfully tough, you’ll simply be used as a pawn in the hand of the powerful.

Look at what is happening around you. The unrighteous get bolder but the good guys panic to affect the status quo. let us not fear to live.

Courage is needed but it needs to be seasoned by Prudence, and what we find in excess is much each in isolation. Much courage without prudence, or much prudence without courage. A combination of these two is rare.

Rare is a prudent and courageous person, and that, Veronica was. She did not wrestle the cross of Christ from the soldiers, that would be suicidal, she focused and went boldly to wipe His face, and she was saved!

May your face shine upon us and we shall be saved (Ps 80:19) so says the Psalmist, and this happened to Veronica. Christ's face shone on her through the cloth she dared to to wipe His face with amidst such pandemonium and danger.

Don’t die before your time through a misguided courage, and avoid living without actually living through a false prudence. Follow the path shown by Veronica, a woman who was wise and dared.

FIFTH STATION: SIMON OF CYRENE HELPS JESUS

In any natural ecosystem, the fittest specie thrives and survives at the expense of the weak and vulnerable. Until Christ came and corrected this basis upon which the strong preys up on the weak. Christ pitched His tent with the weak and said 'It must not be so among you...' (Mk 10: 42-44) and He paid the price for daring to correct the ‘Origin of Species’, an age long anomaly, the consequence of  Adam's fall. 

  

The soldiers easily picked Simon the Cyrenean o carry Jesus’ cross because he was the weakest link in the pack. Simon was a stranger, a ‘nobody’, but he firmly and patiently revolutionised the plights of the poor with Christ through this cross.

The real victims of our age are the outcasts, immigrants, the marginals, the minority class, those across the Periphery, the vulnerable, the unrepresented, public sinners, those struggling with addiction, the prisoners, the neglected. It is amongst these that God is found, this is where breakthroughs are discovered, it is an environment where Christ is better experienced. God dwells amongst hustlers, he is rarely found around the complacent mainstream.

Financial poverty is not man’s actual problem, it is the poverty of the mind and the ability to realise what reality consist that is the root cause of every poverty there is. We Westerners have pretended to be champions of the weak until the present unsatiated rise of the ego manifested in tribalism, nationalism, far rightist, eugenics and wall building, which manifests our utter hypocrisy all along. Our poverty mentality sowed the seed of paranoia and it is already reaping the fruit of discord.

We can give a penny or two to quieten our conscience on the plights of weak, but we keep aloof as much as we can from sharing an outsider’s experience.  It is not enough to assist those on the fringes, what is needed is a real-time identification with an outsider’s experience of being racially, tribally, morally, economically discriminated against.

If we have not experienced what it is like to be on the edge, to be a minority, to be victimised, to be manipulated, we shall be lacking a great deal in lasting wisdom, and we are likely to be greatly flawed in our judgement.

Our living on the edge is intended to shake off our presumption and complacency , it should be invite us into a holy discontent and should make us struggle and hustle, prudently, temperately,  lovingly and patiently to free others and self from these anomalies. 

The Kingdom of God suffereth violence mate (Mt 11: 12). Not the ISIS type, but the Gandhi type, the Martin Luther King Jnr type, the Mandela type, the Simon type, the Christ’s type! Our Jihad is not inflicted unto others, it is reflected on self through the mastering of the Cardinal virtues. 

Don’t just cater for the minority, find a minority to be. Tough, yea? But necessary it is. Be a Simon on the fringe, identify with the fringe. The manipulated will outlast the strong, that is the new rule of Christ, and this is what lasts because it is truth.  

History is on the side of the punished and it is littered with examples to buttress this. The least today will be the leaders of tomorrow. We must discover something about us that puts us on the edge and the unpalatable experience of being ignored and being victimised, and work out prudently and courageously to correct things, as the woman at the next station shows us.

FOURTH STATION: JESUS MEETS HIS MOTHER

Jn 2: 1-12- She knew it. She willed it. She gave Him up for us. The Son clearly understood the meaning of the Mother’s proposal and the ultimate consequence of His gesture.

This invitation to die began privately at the Annunciation in Nazareth but was made public at the wedding in Cana, and these events point to the beginning of  death for God but a life for us. ‘My hour has not yet come…’(Jn 2:4). Christ hour of sacrifice was pushed forward by Mary’s proposal, to foster our salvation.  The power of Motherhood… Please honour your Mom.

She introduced Him into open miracle knowing fully the ultimate consequence. He was incarnated to die! It reflects an abandoned yes of Mary to the yes of God in delivering her Son up for the love of humanity. ‘Do whatever He tells you’ (Jn 2:5).

The Wedding at Cana, a narrative found only in the gospel of John, is an in-depth exposition of the dynamics of the Annunciation incidence for us (Lk 1: 26-38). This is the Evangelist’s manner of reflecting on related events which shows similar significance (Think also, of the dynamics of service and self-giving between the Synoptic Gospels’ Last Supper and the Evangelist’s washing of the Apostles’ feet).

The struggle with Mary is the struggle of many Moms who abort their babies. The difference? She sees, and she knows the consequences, but she let go of him for the love of God and humanity. Whereas, the abortion Mom little sees, she little knows, and she gives up her baby for the love of comfort and the System.

It’s tough on Moms. It takes gut to let a child stay or go. It is a temptation like Gethsemane, in an age where, at the tap of a finger, a woman can dismiss her baby according to her caprices. At that Gethsemane point, Mary looked outwards, but many of the Moms look inwards. They dread decreasing so that their babies may increase.

The dramatic turn of life where a goodwill can turn into a primordial regret. Remember, what goes around comes around.  If the virtue of today can haunt tomorrow, imagine then the consequences of a willed vice on a mother who means well but knows less.

But it is not the end of the world dear Mom, let no man condemn you. What makes Him God is that He brings meaningfulness out of meaninglessness, He creates out of nothing, He gives flesh and life to dry dead bones. How dare you think that the God who resurrected Christ cannot raise your Baby and bring victory to your remorse?

Stay at the heel of Mary and own up. Decide to make your child a Saint but accept your wrongdoing, speak with your child, beg him for your wrong, celebrate him on Holy Innocents, join Pro-life and fight his cause. It’s a sure bet, the eternal Virgin will guide you through a journey back and a reconciliation with your aborted baby and yourself.

Don’t wait for the consequence of a gullible action. Accept and embrace life willingly now to prevent an unwilling death later.

THIRD STATION: JESUS FALLS THE FIRST TIME

The first fall of the righteous and the utter confusion surrounding it.  The ego becomes terribly scared when a striving person experiences that the cross which he had once thought mastered, comes crashing heavily over him, and as he discovers himself doing that which he had once condemned in others.

Chances and grace happen to confidence, and when grace is withdrawn, no man can stand. A man stands because the Mystery has surrounded him with an environment to make him stand. Withdraw these factors and he falls like everyone else. It is foolish to boast, and be careful when condemning others. No man is strong when grace is withdrawn.

The first fall either purifies a soul or kills it. There often results a deep struggle of conscience where the allurement of the sin involved crashes on the soul, pulls it to the ground and wants to keep it fallen under its malaise. To sin is human, but to persevere (callously) in it is devilish, so says St. Theresa. Many not only fall prey but remain preyed to the fall of their sins. Hell is filled with deadened consciences.

How will modern man refrain from justifying his acts? How, bedevilled continually by the gravity of sin, can he refuse to succumb to the entropy of this first fall, amidst the failings of sex, the lies with money, the levity with murder, which have so much scarred consciences in our age, such that heaven weeps to see many missing out of the vast opportunities after a first fall. 

Progress of a soul does not consist in not falling, it lies within a struggle. Many unfortunately opt for the Judasic method of the first fall instead of the Petrine type. They succumb to entropy. 

The first mortal fall may probably happen to most. Do not stifle the rumblings of your soul, do not excuse it, refrain from avoiding the sense of sin, do not deny your infidelities, avoid being a party to those who bank their evils thereby causing the gradual corruption and degradation of humanity. Struggle against the fallen tide of your sin, and rise.

Beg the Lord to know your sins, do not run from them. Running away was the primal reaction of Adam to his fallen state and see what its costed us.  Look yourself in the mirror and tell it as it is, say: ‘I am a miserable sinner, help me Lord’ and simply trust in His mercy. This is what captures the heart of God (Luke 18:9-14)

SECOND STATION: JESUS CARRIES HIS CROSS

Before death, is time, during which man would have to shoulder the cross of waiting or toiling. Cross is the most meaningful subject ever, because it is work in its entirety. It is what the entire cosmos does, it is one bunch of dying and self-giving, it is also the very nature of God. A curse with Adam, but a blessing with Christ. No cross, no crown.

Love is a verb, an action word, everything moves, and without love, the cross is worthless and wasted. This cross pervades everyday living; work, challenges, friction, suffering, pains, are all fabricated within man’s immediate experience, yet, it is not in his flawed nature to carry a cross. Having done everything digitally and technologically possible to ease tasks, yet toil has stubbornly increased because of lack of love.

The global motive of Social Media has aggravated mental and emotional pain. The trauma of broken relationship and unemployment lingers. How about the pressures of work, the challenges of compliance, the complications of balancing work and life, and the subtle enslavement of the 99% by the 1% for meagre pays which has made multitudes abandon life for wasted toils.

A wasted cross is not beneficial to the sufferer. Modern man has forgotten how to live because very few know how to benefit from the cross. Reality has become much of a needless pain, for, by avoiding the cross, we toil.  God did not avoid the cross, so how can we presume to? Since we cannot avoid it lets make the best of it, how?

There are lots of crosses out there and you’ll be overwhelmed carrying just any cross. Do not waste your works and sufferings. Shoulder the easiest, most sustainable and most efficient cross there is: the cross of the Christ Jesus, and with proper understanding, its better carried in our days.

He invites: ‘Come to Me all you who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest, shoulder my yoke… my yoke is easy, and My burden is light (Mt 11:28-30)’.

As sin abounds, grace also abounds much more (Rom 5: 20). Never has the attainment of heaven been so easy than in this our evil and adulterous age (Mt 16:4). It is true, hell has been let loose, but more so, heaven has been let out. Know where to find heaven and make the most of it.

The great secret of this age is about understanding the summary of the cross by reliving the entire  journey of our salvation through heartfelt devotions, by entreating the Holy Spirit within a Marian life, where Christ will be begotten in us as at the beginning of our salvation.

Having done this, do everything to know the Eucharistic Christ, in order to enter His Pasch. This is the Work to master par excellence (Jn 6:27). Go deeper still and understand the mystery behind His Most Sacred Heart, the source of God’s covenant of Divine Mercy, and then rest inside this mercy in confidence, without fear of any condemnation (Rom 8: 1).

These practices, done in spirit and in truth, broadens the heart and produces an underlying reason for love and mercy which enables man to practice authentic charity and reconciliation, and this is what produces the plausible effect of leveraging and mitigating the cross. It wouldn’t get any easier within this plane of existence. Carry your cross then and do not complain, for whatever you go through thereafter could have been worse.

FIRST STATION: JESUS IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH.

Have you ever experienced that very nervous period where your entire freedom rests on the capricious decision of one person, and when at last the worst was defined, and all that you have laboured for was gone in an instant?

That ‘all is lost’ period, is what every man, irrespective of class or creed, sooner or later, would have to experience. It is not ‘if ‘, but ‘when’, everything shall fail, and all shall experience that ‘it is finished’ moment called death.

This death is not simply physical, because change and decay become so very experiential. Life itself follows a certain entropy where freedom is often militated against by gravity and friction, because there pervades a certain karma that follows us all.

Death often happens through life. For instance, you burn the midnight oil, you fail; you toil in business, you lose; you labour to make your relationship work, he/she disappoints; you are devoted entirely to children, family and friends; they go. Life cannot be held on to, it’s got to be let go of, and each letting go is a condemnation unto death.

Being condemned, we are faced with a certain limbo of waiting, worsened when the waiting period is undefined. We become a Victim. Life then becomes an endless horizon when one literally becomes a dead man walking and waiting for time and chance to happen. This is tough.  

Life is a judgement, often spiced by the injustice and unfairness of the whole experience. Our ancestors messed things up, and we have also salted the corruption by our ego. The fallacy of the modern man is to think he can handle this vicissitude alone. Boast and the benchmark will simply be raised to crack your pride. Find out from Peter (Mt 26: 31-35). Eni ija o ba lo n pe ara e l’okunrin.

Take up arms and fight the unfair factor like Peter (Mt 26: 51-52) and you can delay your freedom, or not experience it at all. The impossibility of turning the other cheek (Lk 6:29) is meant to speed up that freedom. Just stay low and, stoop to conquer.

This condemnation, and waiting, is a prerequisite of a rebirth to freedom. It is the meaning of Baptism. The proper understanding and appreciation of which is the great Passover. It is an experiential ritual that every cult, esoteric or open, are initiation into, for, life experience itself is the only cult.

It is when this life is lived and experienced to its very depth that an everlasting freedom in its very summit can be derived, and it is only the Christ Jesus who alone has gone to the utmost depth of this death, body and blood, soul and divinity, and have come out of it alive through the Resurrection!

Listen deep within you and you will hear a sure whisper: ‘leave it with me’. At this point of loss take courage, look beyond the horizon and re-imagine, it’s all going to make sense soon.

Live the life of Christ, for, though Him, this experiential condemnation, that moment, when you must surrender everything - willingly or unwillingly- will be the commencement of wisdom and another life in its utmost zenith. 

TIME, SPACE, ENTROPY AND OUR SALVATION

During the Fall of Man, space and time seized becoming a unity , hence ‘time waits for no man’ and ‘time is not our friend’, but this ‘time, also heals all hurts’.  With time, Time gets tired of its speed and acceleration’, for those who know how to wait. Suurulere.

The model of this waiting is Mary. Hence, when time got tired and became spent, ‘at the fullness of time’, God was born of a woman. This is the genesis of authentic serendipity which happens to the meek and humble. 

How can we sinners, who leave amidst the conflict of time and space presume to do without Mary? Time, as we know it today, has become a big illusion in Mary, by her faith. ‘Be still and know that I am God’. It all happens with the faith and surrender of a woman. 

In our age, the strategic disposition of the Church is to station Mary as the Mother of God within the genesis of time illusion, (January the 1st) and ultimately defeat this entropy that exist in the mind of man as a result of faithlessness. ‘He who does not gather with me scatters’ so says the Lord. 

A popular Scientist, in describing the hopelessness of correcting entropy said the issue is like a scrambled omelette which can never become a hatched egg 🍳 🥚 . That ‘impossibility’ is precisely what Christ has come to correct through the faithfulness and humility of Mary.

TEACHING: A SUPERIOR ACT OF CHARITY

The manner this has been deeply impressed on me now makes the difference . There is a saying: ‘It is not so much giving men fish but teaching them how to fish that counts’. When we give men fish (which we should rightly do) we have only practised a non sustaining, ephemeral, and risky action ( love is a risk anyway) , which would probably come back to haunt in this plane of existence. Christ’s efforts at miracles often hardened their hearts, because man is corrupted.  The better strategy is to teach and perform the principal task of a teacher: letting go, even to the point of death. 

The moment Mary introduced Jesus into open miracle was the commencement of His passion. He had always constantly performed miracles beforehand but was so disinterested that no one knew the source of goodness in there lives. Only deepest faith like Mary can perceive that miracles happen continuously , but His self manifestation at Canaan only pointed to Calvary. Mary, for the love of humanity, you showed your Son the pathway to Calvary. Oore ni’won. But, God does not know how to measure gifts, it is in His nature to give over abundantly. Ko dun, ko po, ko pe, Oluwa lo n fun ni I se.

Back to our point. Teaching is very far superior to material giving. That is why Christ is the ultimate Teacher who sets Himself towards teaching others. Material miracles often comes only after He has set himself to teach them. 

The loftiest vocation is that of a teacher. This purpose informed why the Apostles devoted themselves to teaching and left the lower tasks to Deacons. But 99.99% of us are more interested in the latter because of its immediate gratification. 

The burden of application of what has been taught, weighs upon the learner. If we can apply successfully, it yields what Economists call ‘compound interest ’, that is life . Christ said: not everyone who call me Lord Lord will be with Me, but those who do the will of My Father 

The application of Christ teaching often involves letting go, skinning ourselves (detachment) to arrive at the point of ‘compound interest ’. The reason why Christ admonished us not to call any man a teacher is the fact that others can only point the way. When we trust Him, He not only points the way , but follow through the way with us because He is the Way. This is what grace does. This is why He only is ‘O-ran-mo-nise-faya-ti’.

As in heaven, so on earth. The bulk of problems most Students face is not in the area of knowledge or critical analysis, but in the area of Application. That is why the Application aspect of study is left until the final year when the student has been sufficiently taught and supposedly mature. Few people can apply in the face of worldly catastrophes. That is why many graduates 🎓 go seeking the safe harbour of employment which is a partial risk of application. Entrepreneurship,  a tasking and risky endeavour is what really pushes knowledge to the utmost test, it really opens us up to the path of application and unlearning the learnt. Aye le, eniyan soro...

The bulk of this ‘do what I tell you’ winner that Christ hints is why Application is the key and why without His grace, Application is useless, and why without faith and trust in Him it is impossible to receive this grace. Faith comes first. The bulk of our Spiritual works should be geared towards this work and manner of seeing. Without Him we can do nothing.

The basis is not to stop giving, it is to understand that the superior work lies in teaching, especially in a teaching that involves letting go, in being detached, because every teacher is also a learner, and the bulk of this learning consists in detachment. A teacher should not force, he must respect the learner’s free will. Forcing plays according to rules and laws, and there is a karma with a teaching that uses force. You might have a sufficient broadened heart to cope with its boomerang, just as Christ did after He drove out His point by driving the traders from the temple, but we cannot arrive at the point of abundance without ‘poverty’. Steve Jobs counseled His Students to be foolish, to be hungry.. ‘Eni ti o se bi alaaru l’Oyingbo, ko le se bi Adegboro l’Oja Oba’ . But this detachment should not be forced (only on ourselves) ,  the learner should be allowed to arrive at experience in freedom.

Giving has to lead to teaching, teaching is useless without acquiring knowledge, knowledge is useless without application of what is learnt, Application is useless without cultivating a detached spirit , detachment is useless without grace, grace is impossible without faith in Christ the only authentic Teacher! And this faith will be unnecessary without a burning fire 🔥 of ❤️ love!

THE STATIONS OF THE CROSS : INTRODUCTION

Assume briefly, that you have heard nothing -or very little- about the Christian message and have entered a Church. What do you see?  

All that  imposes on you will be visible signs of sufferings and death. For instance, right ahead inside the Church you see the sculpture of a dead man on a cross. On her walls are lined portraits and paintings of vivid suffering, and in some you have actual graves of men literally buried. Without looking hard and far, the Church is simply a personification of sorrow and death.

Look hard and far enough, and by grace you can discover at the other end of the Church, across to the periphery, something upon which the Church, the world and the entire Civilisation is sustained: It is a Living Bread! This Bread is not made cheap, it comes from the Mass, which itself is an experiential death. It takes the death of God to be sustained in the Tabernacle.

True life can be discovered through the mystery of death, as personified by the Church. The story of suffering and death lining the Church’s interiors is an unwritten message about the mystery of love and life, and the paradox of death and life, where death is a transition to the eternal life of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the true life of the Church! That is why it is described as the source and summit of the Christian life by the Church (CCC 1324).

To reverse the Fall at Eden, we need to eat of the fruit of the tree of life, which is the Eucharist. But effort is required if we are to pass through the gate of Eden where this fruit is grown, because fiery angels with blazing swords have been stationed (Gen 3:24).  Without faith in Jesus the Christ, one can be consumed by the death personified within the Church, a necessary path to the tree of life. This path is the Way of the Cross!

The one lesson to be learnt about life is that without the cross, there can be no crown. One cannot separate love from suffering, freedom from toil, life from death. This is the great life’s Paradox.

How then can a modern person, filled with doubt, pleasure and sloth, come to term with this difficult rationale of the cross? This shall be my task during this Lenten Season: to journey in writing through the 14 Stations of the Passion of Our Lord from a modern-man perspective, and (hopefully) show the fact that, even in our modern age, the greatest means to freedom is the loving acceptance of Our Lord’s cross.

He invites us not to shoulder any cross but His’ (Mt 11:28-30), because His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. He will help us, He is Love and when we love, there is no suffering because, pain disappears.