I. JESUS IS CONDEMNED TO DEATH
They all concurred in the verdict guilty, with its sentence of death (Mark 14:64).
Take neither great nor little notice of who is with you or against you, and try always please God. Ask Him that His Will be done in you. Love Him immensly, as He deserves to be loved. (The sayings of light and love, no 155, p. 96)
...Have a great love for those who contradict and fail to love you, for in this way love is begotten in a heart that has no love. God so acts with us....(The Letters, no 33 p.764)
When something distasteful or unpleasant comes your way, remember Christ crucified and be silent (Letters no 20 p.756).
II. JESUS CARRIES HIS CROSS
Jesus was led away....carrying the cross by Himself (John 19:16-17)
He who seeks not the cross of Christ seeks not the glory of Christ (Sayings no 102)
....It behoves us not to go without the cross, just s our Beloved did not go without it, even to the death of love...(Letters no 11).
Oh! If I could but now fully understand how a soul cannot reach the thicket and wisdom of the riches of God, which are of many kinds, without entering the thicket of many kinds of suffering, finding in this her delight and consolation; and how a soul with an authentic desire for divine wisdom, wants suffering first in order to enter this wisdom by the thicket of the cross (The Spiritual Canticle stanza 36).
III. JESUS FALLS THE FIRST TIME
I was hard pressed and was falling (Psalm 118:13)
On this narrow road there is room only for self-denial (as our Saviour asserts) and the cross. The cross is a supporting staff and greatly lightens and eases the journey (Ascent Bk II, ch 7).
....Not only are temporal goods and bodily delights contradictory to the path leading to God, but so also are spiritual consolations, if possessed or sought with attachment, an obstacle to the way of the cross of Christ, the Bridgeroom. (Canticle, Stanza 3 no 5)
IV. JESUS MEETS HIS AFFLICTED MOTHER
Simeon said to Mary His mother...you yourself shall be pierced with a sword (Luke 2:34-35)
Sometimes, however, and at certain periods, God allows [the soul] to feel things and suffer from them that she might gain more merit and grow in the fervor of love, or for other reasons, as He did with the Virgin Mother, St Paul and others. (Canticle, Stanza 3)
V. SIMEON OF CYRENE HELPS JESUS CARRY HIS CROSS
They pressed [Simeon] into service to carry the Cross (Mark 15:21)
Our Lord proclaimed through St Matthew: My yoke is sweet and my burden light [Mt 11:30], the burden being the cross. If individuals resolutely submit to the carrying of the cross, if they decidedly want to find and endure trial in all things for God, they will discover in all of them great relief and sweetness. (Ascent II ch 7)
Some souls obtain sensible or spiritual sweetness from God because they are incapable of eating the stronger and more solid food for trials of the cross of His Son. He would desire them to take the cross more than any other thing (Ibid Book II ch 12)
VI. VERONICA WIPES THE FACE OF JESUS
There was in Him no stately bearing to make us look at Him (Is 53:2)
When there is union of love, the image of the Beloved is so sketched in the will, and drawn so intimately and vividly, that it is true to say that the Beloved lives in the lover and the lover in the Beloved....Everything can be called a sketch of love in comparison with that perfect image, the transformation in glory. Yet the attainment of such a sketch of transformation in this life is a great blessing, for with this transformation the Beloved is very pleased. Desiring the bride to put Him as a sketch in her soul, He said in the Song of Songs: Put Me as a seal upon your heart...[Sg 8:6](Canticle, stanza 12)
To the soul that is more advanced in love, more conformed to the divine Will, God communicates Himself more. A person who has reached complete conformity and likeness of will has attained total supernatural union and transformation in God. (Ascent Bk II ch 5).
VII JESUS FALLS FOR THE SECOND TIME
My strength has failed through affliction (Psalm 31:11)
Since you walk in these darknesses and voids of spiritual poverty, you think that everyone and everything is failing you. It is no wonder that in this it also seems God is failing you. But nothing is failing you..... Those who desire nothing else than God walk not in darkness, however poor and dark they are in their own sight. And those who walk not presumptously, nor according to their own satisfactions, whether from God or from creatures, nor do their own will in anything, have nothing to stumble over....(Letters no 19).
VIII. JESUS MEETS THE WOMEN OF JERUSALEM
Do not weep for Me. Weep for yourself and for your children (Luke 23:28)
...Christ is little known by those who consider themselves His friends. For we see them going about seeking in Him their own consolations and satisfactions, loving themselves very much, but not loving Him very much by seeking His bitter trials and deaths. (Ascent Bk II ch 7)
IX. JESUS FALLS A THIRD TIME
I looked about, but there was no one to help...no one to lend support (Is. 63:5)
If you do not fear falling alone, do you presume that you will rise up alone? Consider how much more can be accomplished by two together than by one alone. (Sayings no 9)
X. JESUS IS STRIPPED OF HS GARMENTS
They divided His clothes among them (Mt 27:35)
...The soul that is naked of desires and whines, God will clothe with His purity, pleasures, and will. (Ibid, no 98)
Wishing to strip them in fact of this old self and clothe them with the new, which is created according to God...as the Apostle says [Col 3:9-10; Eph 4:22-24; Rom 12:2], God divests the faculties, affections, and senses, both spiritual and sensory, interior and exterior. He leaves the intellect in darkness, the will in aridity, the memory in emptiness, and the affections in supreme afflictions, bitterness and anguish by depriving the soul of the feeling and satisfaction it previously obtained from spiritual blessings. For this privation is one of the conditions required that the spiritual form, which is the union of love, may be introduced into the spirit and united with it. (The dark Night Bk II Ch 3)
XI. JESUS IS NAILED TO THE CROSS
They have pierced my hands and feet (Psalm 22:17)
Crucified inwardly and outwordly with Christ, you will live in this life with fullness and satisfaction of soul, and possess your soul in patience [Luke 21:19] (Sayings no 87)
Let Christ crucified be enough for you, and with Him suffer and take your rest, and hence annihilate yourself in all inward and outward things. (Ibid no 20)
XII. JESUS DIES ON THE CROSS
Through his suffering, my servant shall justify many...he surrendered himself to death (Is 53:11-12)
...He brought about the reconciliation and union of the human race with God through grace. The Lord achieved this....at the moment in which He was most annihilated in all things: in His reputation before people...; in His human nature, by dying; and in spiritual help and consolation from His Father, for He was forsaken....The journey, then, does not consist in consolations, delights, and spiritual feelings, but in the living death of the cross, sensory and spiritual, exterior and interior. (Ascent Bk II ch 7)
True love receives all things that come from the Beloved - prosperity, adversity, even chastisement - with the same eveness of soul, since they are His Will....Death cannot be bitter to the soul than loves, for in it she finds all the sweetness and delight of love....She thinks of death as her friend and bridegroom, and at the thought of it she rejoices as she would over the thought of her betrothal and marriage, and she long for that day and that hour of her death...(Canticle, Stanza 11).
XIII. JESUS IS TAKEN DOWN FROM THE CROSS
He [Joseph of Arimathea] came therefore and took away the body of Jesus (John 19:38)
However intimate may be a person's union with God, there will never be satisfaction and rest until God's glory appears [Ps 17:15]...(The Living Flame of Love stanza 1 no 27)
It is vital for individuals to make acts of love in this life so that being perfected in a short time they may not be detained long, either here on earth or in the next life, before seeing God. (Ibid stanza 1 no 34)
XIV JESUS IS LAID IN THE TOMB
..they laid Jesus, because the sepulcher was nigh at hand (John 19:42).
If you desire to be perfect, sell your will, give it to the poor in spirit, come to Christ in meekness and humility, and follow Him to Calvary and the sepulcher. (Sayings no 165)
It is fitting that the soul be in this sepulcher of dark death in order that it attain the spiritual resurrection for which it hopes. (Dark Night Bk II ch 6).
Credits: text from 'The Way of the Cross with the Carmelite Saints' Compiled by Sr Joseph Marie, CHT Carmelite Hermit of the Trinity.
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