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.