Fourteenth Station: Jesus is Placed in the Tomb
When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was himself a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be handed over. Taking the body, Joseph wrapped it [in] clean linen and laid it in his new tomb that he had hewn in the rock. Then he rolled a huge stone across the entrance to the tomb and departed.
Matthew 27: 57-60
We pray:
Lord Jesus, Your friends pull the iron from your mangled hands and feet and balance your stiffened body down from the cross. They must look on your closed eyes in bitter confusion, seeing their beloved friend, the one they have come to know as the Messiah, silenced by those who opposed him. Bitter grief and a kind of hopelessness is their only food now; they do not understand that they will soon see You alive again.Your lifeless body is anointed and wrapped in a sheet and then laid in a borrowed tomb, sealed from sight, from those who love You, in darkness. Your friends are grieving and Your enemies are celebrating uneasily. But the stone tomb is like a womb that will give birth to everlasting life. Because You accepted even death, death on a cross, death is never the end. Death is always a new beginning.
All:
Lord, through the cross You have conquered death, and made it flow into life. You are placed alone in the tomb to show us that the grave’s utter aloneness is not the end for which we are created. You will soon rise, triumphant over death and sin, with the power to draw all of us to You in everlasting joy and unity. You are living eternally, and You created each of us to live forever with You. Help us to remember that only our bodies enter the tomb; our souls are always alive in You. Give us this deep knowledge of salvation, so that we will be moved to offer our lives as a sacrifice of praise and gratitude.
May we see past the cross and past the tomb to the light of the Resurrection, knowing that the silence and darkness of death is only the crossing ground to an eternal song of praise, and the Day that will never end.
