The Stations of the Cross with Bishop Barron

the first station Jesus is condemned to death when Israel dreamed of a new David it dreamed of a king who would unite the nation cleanse the temple defeat Israel's enemies and then reign over the whole world it's only against this lomi backdrop that we can appreciate what Jesus was doing and how he was perceived the first words out of his mouth and the central theme of his preaching concerned the kingdom of God he announced the new reign centered on himself these were taken quite rightly as fighting words for if a new kingdom is to come the old kingdoms have to give way and if a new king has arrived the old kings have to cede Jesus endeavored to unite the nation to bring the tribes back together this was the point of his OpenTable fellowship he's reaching out to sinners and tax collectors his inclusion of the sick the marginalized in David City he cleansed the temple and promised that he would establish a new temple and throughout his life in ministry Jesus opposed the old kings we see it from the very beginning in the infancy narratives themselves Jesus is presented as an alternative to Quirinius and Augustus and his arrival even as a baby is enough to frighten Herod and all Jerusalem this confrontation between the old and new orders comes to its highest expression as Jesus stands before Pontius Pilate the local representative of Caesar Pilate undoubtedly sure of his power and authority sizes up this criminal are you the King of the Jews Pilate means this in a purely political and worldly way are you trying to seize political control of this part of the Roman Empire but the scene is packed with irony for a Jew would have known the full import of pilots question he was really asking are you the king of the world are you the new David destined to reign over all the nations Jesus tells him straightforwardly enough my kingdom does not belong to this world this does not mean that Jesus is unconcerned for the realities of politics with the very this worldly concerns of justice peace and right order it means that the reign that he has been announcing is not a new political order based like the others on threats and violence this is why he immediately clarifies that his attendants are not fighting to keep me from being handed over it is the reign of God that he announces God's nonviolent and compassionate ordering of things unimpressed Pilate asks what is truth and many condemns Jesus to death he plays the typical worldly game of power politics and by all appearances he wins as ruthless and violent people seemed to do but through the cross and resurrection Jesus defeated him he outmaneuvered the violence of sin and swallowed it up in the divine forgiveness he defeated the enemies of Israel and he thereby established his own body as the new temple which is why blood and water flowed out from it he gathered all people to himself as the Davidic King was expected to when the Son of Man is raised up he will draw all people to himself he wasn't short the new king the one to whom final Allegiance is due the second station Jesus takes up his cross all of us sinners tend to see the universe turning around our egos our needs our projects our plans our likes and dislikes true conversion the Metanoia that Jesus talks about it's so much more than moral reform though it includes that it has to do with a complete shift in consciousness a whole new way of looking at one's life Jesus offered a teaching that must have been gut-wrenching to his first century audience if anyone wishes to come after me he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me his listeners knew what the cross meant a death and utter agony nakedness and humiliation they knew it in all of its awful power so why does the Sun take up the cross because God the father's angry because he wants to lord it over us because God needs something no he comes purely out of love out of God's desire that we flourish God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but might have eternal life God the Father is not a pathetic divinity who's bruised personal honor needs to be restored rather God is a parent who burns with compassion for his children who have wandered into danger does the father hate sinners no but he hates sin does he Harbor indignation at the unjust no but he despises injustice and thus he sends his son not to see him suffer but to set things right st. Anselm the great medieval theologian who was often unfairly blamed for the cruel theology of satisfaction was eminently clear on this score we sinners are like diamonds that have fallen into the muck made in the image of God we have soiled ourselves through violence and hatred in his passion to reestablish the beauty of his creation God came down into the muck of sin and death and brought the diamond up and polished it off in so doing of course he had to get dirty this sinking into the dirt this divine solidarity with the lost is the sacrifice which the son makes to the infinite pleasure of the father it is a sacrifice expressive not of anger or vengeance but of compassion if God is self-forgetting love even to the point of death then we must be such love if God is willing to break open his own heart then we must be willing to break open our hearts for others the cross in short must become the very structure of the Christian life there's a line from the illuminator of the st. John's Bible that states we have to love our way out of this there's nothing wimpy or namby-pamby or blind about this conviction when we love extravagantly we are not purposely blinding ourselves to moral realities just the contrary love is not a sentiment but a harsh and dreadful thing as Dostoevsky said this is just what Jesus shows on his terrible cross and this is just what we his followers must imitate taking up the cross means not just being willing to suffer but being willing to suffer as he did absorbing violence and hatred through our forgiveness and non-violence the third station Jesus Falls for the first time on the way to Calvary Jesus the Son of God fell under the weight of the cross some years ago I delivered a homily on the subject of God's benevolent and providential direction of the cosmos I felt the sermon had been inspiring and informative and the numerous people who complimented me afterward confirmed my own assessment but after everybody else had streamed past me an older man approached and eyeing me wearily said father I'm on a quest and your homily didn't help I responded what what do you mean he then proceeded to tell me a terrible story he had two granddaughters ages 5 and 7 both of whom were suffering from a terminal disease that the doctors could neither control nor fully understand all they knew for sure was that both girls would die and that before death both would go blind he told me that the elder child had just lost her sight and that the younger was lying awake at night crying in terror as she contemplated her own future father he said my quest is to find out why God is doing this to my granddaughters I've been to priests ministers rabbis and gurus and I've never gotten a very good answer and frankly your homily shed very little light well I was flabbergasted stunned never had the problem of evil reconciling the goodness of God with the presence of suffering appeared to me so concretely and in such a challenging way I told them that I didn't have a concrete answer to his question but that his question itself was a holy one because it meant that he had not given up on God he was still searching for God and if you follow that question all the way you'll be led to the heart of the Christian mystery which is that God the Father sends his son into the very worst of our suffering into what frightens us the most and in that we have the answer not one maybe that satisfies our curiosity completely but a deeply powerful spiritual answer that God doesn't take away our suffering but he enters into it with us and thereby sanctifies it the fourth station Jesus meets his Blessed Mother The Passion of the Christ was one of the most provocative and popular religious movies in decades one thing that especially struck me when I saw it is the role played by Mary the mother of Jesus we are compelled to see the scenes through her eyes early in Luke's Gospel we are told that Mary contemplated these things reflecting on them in her heart she is the theologian par excellence she's the one who understands if Mary is the one through whom Christ was born and if the church is indeed Christ's mystical body then she must be in a very real sense the mother of the church she's the one through whom Jesus continues to be born we hear in the gospel that as he was dying on the cross Jesus looked to his mother and the disciple whom he loved and he said to Mary woman behold your son then to John behold Your Mother we are told that from that hour the disciple took her into his home this text supports an ancient tradition that the Apostle John would have taken Mary with him when he traveled to Ephesus in Asia Minor and that both ended their days in that city indeed on the top of a high hill overlooking the Aegean Sea just outside of Ephesus there's a modest dwelling that tradition holds to be the house of Mary Immaculate Mary the mother of God assumed body and soul into heaven is not a merely historical or theoretical interest nor she's simply a spiritual exemplar and said as Queen of all the Saints Mary is an ongoing presence an actor in the life of the church in entrusting married to John Jesus was in a real way entrusting Mary to all those who would be Friends of Jesus down through the ages this is not to confuse her of course with the Savior but it is to insist on her mission as mediator and intercessor at the close of the great Hail Mary prayer we Catholics ask Mary to pray for us now and at the hour of our death signaling that throughout one's life Mary is the privileged channel through which the grace of Christ flows into the mystical body her basic task is always to draw people into deeper fellowship with her son the church's conviction is that the Blessed Mother continues to say yes to God and to go in haste on mission around the world she does so usually in quiet hidden ways responding to prayer and interceding for the church sometimes she does so in a remarkable manner breaking into our world strikingly and visibly God delights and drawing secondary causes into the dense complexity of his providential plan granting to them the honor of cooperating with him in his designs the Virgin Mary the handmaid of the Lord is the humblest of these humble instruments and therefore the most effective the fifth station Simon of Cyrene is made to help Jesus bear the cross a donkey is a beast of burden a humble simple unassuming animal used by very ordinary people to do their work the wealthy and powerful might own horses or a team of oxen a political leader might ride a stately steel but they would have little to do with donkeys almost public career Jesus had resisted when people claimed Messiahship for him he sternly ordered them to be silent when they came to carry him off and make him King he slipped away but on Palm Sunday he's willing to be proclaimed precisely at the moment when he rides into Jerusalem on a donkey and the gospel is clear it is a colt the foal of a donkey on whom no one had ever previously sat in other words this is a young inexperienced unimpressive donkey and this is the animal upon whom Jesus rides into town in triumph the humble donkey pressed into service is a model of discipleship our purpose in life is not to draw attention to ourselves to have a brilliant career to aggrandize our egos rather our purpose is to serve the Masters need to cooperate with his work as he sees fit what was the donkey's task he was a Christopher a Christ Bearer he carried the Lord into Jerusalem paving the way for the passion and the redemption of the world would anyone have particularly noticed him probably not except perhaps to laugh at this ludicrous animal what is the task of every disciple just the same to be a Christopher a bearer of Christ to the world might we be unnoticed in this sure might we if we are noticed be laughed at well of course but the master has need of us and so we perform our essential tasks in the Theo drama during Christ's passion there's one figure who imitates the donkey and that's simon of cyrene the Romans didn't want Jesus to die before the crucifixion and so they pressed into service how like the donkey a man from Cyrene and North Africa probably visitor coming to Jerusalem for the Passover how perilous and dangers this must have seemed to him but he seizes the moment and carries the cross burying some of Jesus suffering simon of cyrene must have had many other plans for his life many other dreams and ambitions but at the moment of truth the master had need of him and he responded and his story is told to this day life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans your life is not about you remember the master has need of you whether and how you respond is all that matters the sixth station Veronica wipes the face of Jesus [Music] tradition has it that a woman called Veronica wiped the blood and sweat from Jesus face as he made his way to Calvary leaving his image miraculously imprinted on her veil what do we see in the face of Christ we see the Son of God the Divine Word made flesh to use Paul's language God has brought to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Jesus Christ hidden through his humble humanity his divinity shines forth the proximity of his divinity in no way compromises the integrity of his humanity but rather makes it shine in greater beauty this is the New Testament version of the burning bush the Jesus who was both divine and human is that Jesus who is evangelical E compelling if he's only divine then he doesn't touch us if he's only human he can't save us his splendor consists in the coming together of the two natures this is the christ who wants to reign as Lord of our lives in every detail and we see in the veil of Veronica the suffering Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world the lord of life came and we killed him therefore hiding denying covering up pretence excuses subterfuges all the ruses of self justification are permanently out of the question our own dysfunction is on public view and every wound on the body of Jesus when we direct ourselves toward the brilliance of the crucified Christ every smudge on the windowpane of the soul becomes visible in the tormented face of the suffering Christ we know that something has gone terribly wrong with us that no one is okay that we're like prisoners chained inside of an escape-proof prison that we are at war where our selves that pharaoh has enslaved the Israelites and pressed them into service that we are under judgment that all we can do is cry o come o come Emmanuel but in that veil of Veronica we also see the face of mercy when we had wandered into the cold and distant country of sin God's love came to search us out when we had sunk under the waves that love went deeper when we had ourselves up in the sombre cave of our self regard and self-reproach that love crouched down and with a candle entered in and this is why we Christians don't hide the awful face of a dying Christ this is why we show it to the world in Jesus Agony's God is taking our agony away we know it is no longer we who live but Christ who lives in us we realize that nothing can ever separate us from the love of God the church doesn't have a mission it is a mission and its purpose is to cause the merciful face of Jesus to gaze upon everyone in the world the seventh station Jesus Falls for the second time under the crushing weight of the cross Jesus fell a second time the Prophet Jeremiah gave voice to a longing and a hope that must have been deeply planted in the collective consciousness of the nation he expresses Yahweh's own pledge that he himself would one day fulfill the Covenant and forgive the sins of the people in the 31st chapter of the Book of Jeremiah we find these extraordinary words the days are surely coming says the Lord when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah it will not be like the Covenant I made with their ancestors a covenant that they broke but this is the Covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days I will put my law within them I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people all the prophets know that the covenants God made with Israel through Abraham Moses and David have failed due to the people's infidelity but Jeremiah dreams that one day through Yahweh's own direct intervention a faithful Israel will emerge a people who have a heart for the Lord who consider the law not an external imposition but a joy how will this renewal take place how will y'all weigh plant the law so deeply in the children of Israel that their fulfillment of the Covenant will be effortless to find the answers we must turn to some mysterious text in the book of the prophet Isaiah text that particularly fascinated the first Christians in the 52nd chapter of Isaiah we find a reference to a figure called the servant of the Lord who we are told will be exalted and lifted up and shall be very high the nations of the earth will see him in this prominent position but they shall not be looking at a splendid warrior or Magi stick Victor instead they will be astonished at how marred was his appearance beyond human semblance in chapter 53 the description of this servant continues he had no form or majesty that we should look at him nothing in his appearance that we should desire him he was despised and rejected by others a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity and then the reason for his deformation and anguish is made clearer surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases he was wounded for our transgressions crushed for our iniquities and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all the suffering servant is presented in short as a sacrificial figure one who will on behalf of the entire nation offer himself for the sins of the many his greatness will consist not in personal independence and political power but rather in his willingness to bear the weight of sin to disempower sin as it were from within in a word the Covenant of which Jeremiah speaks the writing of the law in the hearts of the people would be effected through the sacrificial servant of whom Isaiah speaks the 8th station Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem as Jesus is led to Calvary a great number followed him including the weeping women of Jerusalem Jesus turned to them and spoke as judge of the world saying daughters of Jerusalem do not weep for me but weep for yourselves and for your children the New Testament insists that Jesus both shows us that we are sinners he's judged and offers us the way out of sin he's a savior when one or the other of these emphases is lost our spiritual path is decisively compromised either through overconfidence or through terror when they are both adequately stressed our spiritual path opens up because we know we must walk it and we can walk it in Jesus of Nazareth God's own mind became flesh that's to say the pattern of God's being appeared in time and space Colossians tells us that Jesus is the perfect image the icon of the Father and thus his arrival was in itself a challenge to all that is not in conformity with the divine pattern in his very person is the kingdom the divine or doe and therefore his presence is the light in which the disorder of all the earthly kingdoms becomes apparent in this sense every move his every word his every gesture constituted God's judgment on the world for in the measure that he was opposed he clarified the dysfunctional nature of his opponents with John the Baptist spoke of the coming of the Messiah he used an edgy image his winnowing Fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat in to the granary but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire the farmer in first century Palestine would place the newly harvested wheat on the floor of the barn and then using a sort of pitchfork would toss the grain in the air forcing the lighter chaff to separate itself from the usable wheat thus Jesus presents John the Baptist is saying would be a winnowing fan an agent of separation and clarification and nowhere is this judgment more evident than in his violent death Jesus did not simply pass away he was killed executed by command of the Roman governor and with the approval of the religious establishment as Peter put it in the earliest charismatic preaching in the Acts of the Apostles and you killed the author of life whom God raised from the dead the implication of Peters speech of course is that you the killers have been revealed as the enemies of life and the you as Peter himself knew with special insight included not simply the Roman and Jewish ruling classes but everyone even Jesus most intimate followers even himself all the social groups of Jesus time Pharisees Sadducees zealots Essenes temple priests Roman occupiers his own disciples all had this in common they were all at the end of the day opposed to Jesus at the moment of truth as the gospel tells us they all fled Bob Dylan said the enemy I see wears the cloak of decency a favorite ruse of sinners is to wrap themselves in the mantle of respectability Jesus the judge is the one who rips away the cloak literally unveiling revealing the truth of things whenever we're tempted to think that all is well with us we hold up the cross of Jesus and let our illusions die ix station Jesus Falls for the third time [Music] whiny Jesus bear the terrible weight of the Cross across so heavy it caused him to fall not once not twice but three times the answer is that if the weight of sin have been addressed only from a distance only through divine Fiat it would not have been truly conquered but when it is withstood by someone willing fully to submit to it it is effectively exploded from within undermined defeated this is the strategy of Jesus the Lamb of God we see it in a number of gospel scenes that depict Jesus as tired out after his contact with the sick the lost and the sinful at the beginning of mark's gospel for example we find an account of a typical day in the ministry of Jesus the people press on him from all sides compelling him to find refuge in a boat lest he be crushed by the crowd and at one point there are so many supplicants surrounding him that he couldn't even eat mark tells us that Jesus went off to a secluded place to pray but even there they sought him out coming at him from all sides in the Magnificent narrative of the woman at the well in the Gospel of John we hear that Jesus sat down by Jacob's Well tired out by his journey this description is straightforward enough on the literal level for who wouldn't be tired after a morning's march through dry country but as agustin and others have reminded us it has another sense on the mystical level Jesus is tired from his incarnation Allah into human sin and dysfunction signified by the well he says you come to this well every day and you become thirsty again indicating that the well is emblematic of errant desire of the woman's tendency to fill up her longing for God with the transient goods of creation in order to effect a change in her the Lamb of God had to be willing to enter into her dysfunctional world and to share the spiritual weariness of it j.r.r tolkien keenly appreciated this sacrificial dynamic his great Christ figure Frodo The Hobbit brought about the salvation of middle-earth precisely through his entry into the heart of the land of Mordor disempowering that terrible place through his humble willingness to bear the full weight of its burden all of us however was but an anticipation of the ultimate sacrifice of the Lamb of God the final enemy that had to be defeated if God and his human family could once again sit down and easy fellowship was death itself in a very real sense death and the fear of death stand behind all sin and hence Jesus had to journey into the realm of death and through sacrifice twisted back to life innumerable heroes in the course of human history had tried to conquer that realm by using its weapons fighting violence with violence and hatred with hatred but this strategy was and still is hopeless the battle plan of the Lamb of God was paradoxical in the extreme he would conquer death precisely by dying the tenth station Jesus is stripped of his garments the soldiers took Jesus clothes and divided them into four shares one for each soldier and cast lots for his tunic fulfilling the words of the Psalms they divided my garments among them and for my vesture they cast lots Christ is stripped of everything reputation comfort esteem food drink even the pathetic clothes on his back Thomas Aquinas said that if you want to see the perfect exemplification of the Beatitudes you should look to Christ crucified he specified this observation as follows if you want beatitude happiness despise what Jesus despised on the cross and love what he loved on the cross what did he despised on the cross but the four classical addictions wealth pleasure power and honor at the root of sin is fear especially fear of death to counter that fear people aggrandize the ego decorating it with the approval of others or stuffing it with worldly goods but the crucified Jesus was utterly detached from wealth and worldly goods he was stripped naked and his hands fixed to the wood of the cross could grasp it nothing more to it he was detached from pleasure on the cross Jesus underwent the most agonizing kind of physical torment a pain that was literally excruciating X crew che from the cross but he also experienced the extreme of psychological and even spiritual suffering and he was bereft of power even to the point of being unable to move or defend himself in any way finally I'm a terrible cross he was completely detached from the esteem of others in a public place not far from the gate of Jerusalem he hung from an instrument of torture exposed to the mockery of the crowd displayed as a common criminal in this he endured the limit case of dishonor in the most dramatic way possible therefore that crucified Jesus demonstrated a liberation from the four principal temptations that lead us from God st. Paul expressed this accomplishment in typically vivid language he nailed our sins to the cross but what did Jesus love on the cross he loved the will of his father his father had sent him into the farthest reaches of God forsaken us in order to bring the divine love even to that darkest place and Jesus loved that mission to the very end and it was precisely his detachment from the four great temptations that enabled him to walk that walk what he loved and what he despised were in a strange balance on the cross poor in spirit meek mourning and persecuted he was able to be pure of heart to seek righteousness utterly to become the ultimate peacemaker and to be the perfect conduit of the divine mercy to the world though it is supremely paradoxical to say so the crucified Jesus is therefore the man of beatitude a truly happy man and Jesus stripped of his garments and nailed to the cross is the very icon of Liberty for he's free from those attachments that would prevent him from attaining the true good which is doing the will of his father the 11th station Jesus is crucified on the cross Jesus said Father forgive them for they know not what they do dying on a roman instrument of torture he allowed the full force of the world's hatred and dysfunction to wash over him to spend itself on him and he responded not with an answering violence or resentment but with forgiveness he thereby took away the sin of the world to use the language of the liturgy swallowing it up in the Divine Mercy in the Gospel of Luke Jesus compared himself to a mother hen who longed to gather her chicks under her wing as NT right points out this is much more than a sentimental image it refers to the gesture of a hen when fire is sweeping through the barn in order to protect her chicks she will sacrifice herself gathering them under her wing and using her own body as a shield on the cross Jesus used as it were his own sacrificed body as a shield taking the full force of the world's hatred and violence he entered into close quarters with sin that's where sinners are found and allowed the heat and fury of sin to destroy him even as he protected us with this metaphor in mind we can see with special clarity why the first Christians associated the crucified Jesus with the suffering servant of Isaiah by enduring the pain of the cross Jesus did indeed bear arsons by His stripes we were indeed healed through the final sacrifice of Jesus the high priest eternal life has been made available to the whole of humanity the sacrifice of the mass is a participation in this great eternal act by which Jesus entered on our behalf into the heavenly sanctuary with his own blood and returned bearing the forgiveness of the father when the high priest came out of the sanctuary and sprinkled the people with blood he was understood to be acting in the very person of God renewing creation the ultimate sacrifice having been offered Christ the priest comes for that every Mass with his lifeblood and the universe is restored the priests actions of the altar are but a symbolic manifestation of this mystical reality which is why he's described as operating in Persona Christi in the very person of Christ though the ordained priest alone can preside at the mass and effect the Eucharistic change all of the baptized participate in the mass in a priestly way they do this through their prayers and responses but also as lumen gentium specifies by uniting their personal sacrifices and sufferings to the great sacrifice of Christ so a father witnesses the agony of his son in the hospital a mother endures the rebellion of a teenaged daughter a young man receives news of his brother's death in battle an elderly man tosses on his bed in anxiety as he contemplates his unsure financial situation a graduate student struggles to complete his doctoral thesis a child experiences for the first time the breakup of a close friendship an idealist confronts the stubborn resistance of a cynical opponent these people could see their pain is simply dumb suffering the off scourings of an indifferent universe or they could see them through the lens provided by the sacrificial death of Jesus appreciating them as the means by which God is drawing them closer to himself the 12th station Jesus dies on the cross [Music] in Mark's Gospel the last thing we hear from Jesus is an animal cry Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last but in John's gospel in which the priesthood of Jesus is consistently emphasized we find just before Jesus death a liturgical word in the Latin version of this passage it is consumed Atum esthe it is completed this is the affirmation that a work has been done that something has been brought to fulfillment how often in the New Testament do we hear the language of fulfillment in order that the Scriptures might be fulfilled in fulfillment of the scriptures etc Jesus saw himself as the climax to a story as the culminating chapter in a novel as the hinge of a great drama if we don't know the contours of the drama we won't know him and the drama involves a rescue operation that God launched by forming the people of Israel when the world had gone wrong through sin God endeavored to fashion a family that would know him and would worship Him aright this process began with Abraham and the Covenant that God cut with him it continued through Moses and David as God secured further covenants with them he wanted to form a priestly people a people of Orthodoxy or write praise this rightly ordered people would then become a magnet to the other nations of the world Mount Zion the true Pole of the earth were all the tribes go up though God was ever faithful the people Israel wavered though they were called back by the prophets to covenant fidelity they tended not to listen though the temple was established as the place of right praise it became corrupt and fel was not the magnet for the other nations but rather their footstool and servant Israel was enslaved by Egypt overrun by Assyria Babylon Greece and Rome more to it the tribes of Israel instead of coming together around Mount Zion had been scattered and so Israel began to dream of a new King David a figure who would fulfill all of its expectations and complete God's rescue operation the author of John's Gospel was a master of irony and one of his most delicious twists involves the sign that punches pilot placed over the cross of the dying Jesus jaysus Naza Raynaud's wrecks you day Oram Jesus of Nazareth King of the Jews the Roman governor of course meant it as a taunt but the sign written out in the three major languages of that time in place Hebrew Latin and Greek in fact made Pilate unwittingly the first great evangelist the king of the Jews on the Old Testament reading was destined to be the king of the world and this is precisely what Pilate effectively announced even at Calvary when in a dwindle to three members Jesus Church his community was Catholic for it was destined to embrace everyone at Pentecost the disciples gathered in the upper room were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to preach the good news they were heard miraculously in the many languages of those who had gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles as the Church Fathers clearly saw this was the reversal of the curse of Babel when the one language of the human race was divided and the people accordingly set against each other now through the announcement of the lordship of Jesus the many languages again become one for this message is the one that every person across space and time was born to hear Jesus is the new king the thirteenth station Jesus is taken down from the cross and given to his mother after the crucifixion Jesus was taken from the cross and laid in the arms of Mary a scene captured in Michelangelo's iconic pietà for five centuries now scholars and admirers have remarked the serenity and youthfulness of Mary's face in the Pieta we presume she would have been at least 45 or 50 at the time of the crucifixion and yet Michelangelo depicts her as a young woman perhaps in her early 20s what the heiress was showing us is not only the historical mary but mary as new eve and every young mother of the church michelangelo was throughout his life a great devotee of the poet Dante at the end of a Divine Comedy we find a famous line placed on the lips of Saint Bernard as he sings the praises of the mother of God virgin mother daughter of your son humbled and exalted more than any other creature since Mary's son according to the flesh is also the Divine Word through whom all things are made mary's indeed both mother and daughter of Christ Michelangelo suggested this absolutely unique relationship in the youthfulness of Jesus mother one of the most extraordinary features of the pietá from a purely structural or compositional standpoint is how Michelangelo managed to make the figures of Mary and Jesus look so natural and elegant together despite the fact that what's being presented is a woman supporting the body of an adult man on her lap in fact Mary's body is significantly larger than that of Jesus she contains him in the wonderful words of sister Wendy Beckett she's like a great mountain and his body like a river flowing down the church fathers compared Mary to the Ark of the Covenant the receptacle of a 10 commandments which the ancient Israelites appreciated as the dwelling place of God so Mary who carried the Incarnate Word in her very womb becomes the Ark of the Covenant par excellence according to the Gospel accounts Mary having given birth to Jesus placed him in a manger where the animals eat at the climax of his life Jesus would become food for the life of the world Michelangelo depicts Mary's left hand in a gesture of offering as though she's presenting him as a gift this same gesture is found in that especially evocative scene in The Passion of the Christ when Mary marked with Jesus blood presents the sacrifice of her son to us and for us in Michelangelo's sculpture her right hand supports him but touches him only indirectly through her garment both our Eucharistic references the church continually offers the body of Jesus under the forms of bread and wine and when the priest shows the Blessed Sacrament he touches the monstrance only through a veil keep in mind that the sculpture was intended to be an altarpiece that is to say something closely associated with the celebration of the mass what we see in the Pieta the image of the Virgin Mother cradling her son is what we see at the mass namely the offering of the body of the crucified Jesus for the life of the world the 14th station Jesus is laid in the tomb Joseph of Arimathea a secret admirer of Jesus came courageously to ask for the body of the Lord and a group of women who had accompanied Jesus from Galilee watched carefully to see where he was buried as his enemies closed in on him and even his most intimate disciples fled in fear these people stayed with Jesus until the end Luke aptly speaks of the women as having followed the body of Jesus to its resting place their discipleship of the Lord complete and consistent Jesus wants to go to the cross because he loves his father's will and therefore those who love Him who want what he wants go to that same bitter end in st. John's Gospel we hear that Jesus is buried in a new tomb that was situated in a garden which signals the renewal of Eden the way back into the garden from which we were exiled through sin the three women come as we might expect any visitor to any grave to come they have their oil with them and they intend to honor the body of Jesus we might imagine them sitting in reverential silence afterward reflecting on the life and words of their friend expressing their admiration for him and the tragedy of his death but this is no ordinary grave the first thing they notice is the stone rolled away now this could have been the result of grave robbers of someone trying to break in and desecrate the tomb but it's just beginning to dawn on them that it's a result in fact of someone breaking out then we hear they made their way out and fled from the tomb the Wilderland trembling and because of their great fear they said nothing to anyone this grave is not the source of peace and wrath calm and thoughtful meditation this grave is the source of terror and upheaval ordinary graves are places of finality and inevitability this grave is a place of novelty so shocking that it frightens the Wits out of people from this grave of Jesus we learn that the supposed love nature aren't laws after all that would always move this way now moves that way some people think they'll make the resurrection more intelligible more acceptable to modern people if they allegorize it away turning it into a vague symbol of the pre Durance of jesus cause but then his grave wouldn't be frightening it would be like the grave of any ordinary hero sad wistful reassuring evangelization the proclamation of the good news the gospel that you wan gaily on has to do with the resurrection of jesus christ from the dead on every page of the new testament one can discern an excitement born of something utterly novel and unexpected but Jesus of Nazareth who had died on a cross and was buried in a tomb is now through the power of God raised up everything else in Christian life flows from and is related to this empty tomb you

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Keywords: Bishop Barron, Stations of the Cross, Lent, Word on Fire, Word on Fire Institute

Id: pJNjtA-Awb4

Length: 54min 7sec (3247 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 08 2019