Exhaling

If you are one of many praying for this project, let me thank you again, and assure you that you are in my prayers as well.

If this keeps up, I may have to ask your prayers for all my projects

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Luke 23: 39-43

We pray:
Lord Jesus, Your love is freely given, but cannot be forced on us. Love must be freely accepted. Here, in Your extreme agony as You take Your last labored breaths, You are still reaching out with love to all who will open themselves to it, especially the least among us. The “Good Thief” is good because he acknowledges his helplessness and sinfulness and reaches toward You for hope; he knows that he is “not good” alone, and reaches out to You, because You are goodness, You are truth, You are love. He accepts Your love, and enters Heaven through the door of Your freely borne wounds.  It is Your great love for us that makes sin so offensive and which is the inexhaustible Source of Mercy, which desires to forget every offense, restore us to our original dignity, and fill us with every good thing.

Your goodness and mercy are like water or light, reaching into every space that is open to them, filling every space that is not sealed against them. 

All:

Lord, You never fail to repay our slightest efforts toward You, and You repay everything a hundredfold. Give us the grace to acknowledge our own powerlessness, so that we will keep ourselves open to Your healing touch, Your overflowing mercy, Your absolute goodness, and be re-created in your image. Help us to keep our hearts fully open to the glorious light of Your Truth, and the cleansing waters of Your merciful Love, so that we can be fully alive and walk in the freedom of the Spirit Who is Life and Love.

 May Your eager forgiveness and infinite mercy help us to acknowledge our weakness and open our hearts to Your Love.

When they came to the place called the Skull, they crucified him and the criminals there, one on his right, the other on his left. [Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do."] The people stood by and watched; the rulers, meanwhile, sneered at him and said, “He saved others, let him save himself if he is the chosen one, the Messiah of God.” Even the soldiers jeered at him. Above him there was an inscription that read, “This is the King of the Jews.”  Luke 23: 33-38

We pray:
Lord Jesus, You are stretched out on the wood of the cross, exposed to the ridicule of a pitiless crowd, and yet You give everything willingly. In total freedom, You open Your arms and accept every detail of this execution – the rough wood against torn skin, exposure to the cold stinging wind, the crudeness of the executioners, the blood in Your eyes, the raging pain of thorns in the skull, and the sickening violence of iron driven into flesh. Utter agony. A sign proclaims You “King of the Jews.” You reign from the cross. Earthly kings reign by making people subject to them; You reign by making yourself subject to us, by giving Yourself wholly to us. Raised on the throne of the cross, crowned with thorns, You reign; and Your gift to all of us is forgiveness and love. As You are raised on the cross and offer Yourself to the Father, You offer each one of us and all we suffer – within Your Heart, capable of transforming all things with love, we are present to You in this moment of salvation. 

All:

Lord, because You desire to share Your victory with us, the Cross is always open to love willing to suffer for others, and the Redemption is always being completed by our own self-giving. Help us to move beyond intellectual assent or commitment to action and to become oblation, pouring ourselves out for others in union with You, so that by carrying Your death in our bodies, Your life may also be manifest (2 Cor 4:10). In this way, we present our own bodies as a holy and living sacrifice, which is our spiritual worship (Rom 12:1), and all we do for love is transformed into glory.

May Your willingness to give all for each of us enable us to walk toward you in the shadow of the Cross, which fills every void and makes sense of every difficulty and every pain.

I could use some suggestions for this meditation, as it doesn’t quite “hit the mark” in my mind…. 

A large crowd of people followed Jesus, including many women who mourned and lamented him. Jesus turned to them and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep instead for yourselves and for your children, for indeed, the days are coming when people will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed.’ At that time, people will say to the mountains, ‘Fall upon us!’ and to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ for if these things are done when the wood is green what will happen when it is dry?”
Luke 23: 27-31

We pray:
Lord Jesus, You are on the point of death, but even now Your compassionate heart is looking for ways to give, to comfort others, to save those along the way. You to pause and speak with these women, weeping and mourning at the sight of Your suffering and the vulgar noise of the crowd. Was Your face new to them, or had they been part of the crowds that followed and listened to Your words? What must have been the reaction of these women to this encounter? What did they see in Your face? They could not have understood clearly the meaning of the words You spoke, and yet, what must it have been like to look into the eyes of the Suffering Servant in His very agony? You try to open their eyes to the wider realities around them, to help them see that it is the unwillingness to be open to the truth that causes this suffering, that people have not recognized “the time of their visitation” (Luke 19:44). 

All:

Lord, give us the grace to recognize Your presence among us, in the people around us, in the activities of the day, and especially within your Church. Help us to appreciate the truth that You are always coming to us, especially in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist, so that we might live in gratitude for this Presence.  

May Your Presence within us and among us radiate joyfully, that we may be bearers of Your Light into every darkened place in the world.

They pressed into service a passer-by, Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.
Mark 15: 21

We pray:
Lord Jesus, You are truly man, one like us in all things but sin, and here we see You so weakened that You cannot go on – You are only a tormented bloody heap dragging through the dust of the road that will take You outside the walls of the city. In Your unprotected weakness, You need someone to help You reach the end.Simon does not want to get involved with this criminal, nor with the mess of an execution. He does not want this interruption in his life. But You want to give Simon the gift of helping you, the gift of the Cross, the gift of sharing in the work of redemption. Others’ needs are always an interruption for us, a crossroad; self-giving love is open to these disruptions and delays, and looks for places in which heartfelt giving can meet real need.

All: Lord, when faced with the needs of others, we are often tempted to turn away, to take the easy way, to declare that this is not our responsibility.  But we are called to “bear one another’s burdens” (Gal 6:2) and to “make up what is lacking” in the work of salvation (Col 1:24).  This is the mystery of self-giving love which You came to show us. We are Christ to one another when we remain open and available to the need and weakness in one another, willing to expose ourselves to the suffering of others, ready to bear what they cannot bear alone, offering ourselves for their good. 

May we accept Your invitation to be unmistakable witnesses to the unearthly truth of sacrificial love.

Then (Pilate) handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha.
John 19: 16-17

We pray:
Lord Jesus, the cross is the instrument of the most shameful execution, but You embrace it eagerly as the key that will open the floodgates of grace and the fullness of life to all. The rough beam burns deeply into Your wounded shoulders, the darkness of sin and rejection weighing heavily on Your generous Heart. You are already near death, barely resembling the charismatic rabbi so recently speaking with authority, healing the broken, and forgiving sins. But You choose this way freely: No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. (Jn 10) And this is the definition of true gift: the value of a gift is not in what we allow to be taken from us, but in what we freely give.

You told us in advance the way we must follow – we must take up our own cross and follow You (Mk 8:34). Of course, anyone carrying a cross was carrying it to death. We must follow You to the end, and embrace our daily deaths so that we can rise to new life in You. 

All:

Lord, we often place limits or conditions on what we will give or do for You. But if we will have life and have it to the full, we must give all and offer ourselves completely to You. We must be willing to pour ourselves out for others, to walk the way of the cross with You.Help us to say YES to Your way, to the crosses You ask us to carry, to be heedless of the thorns and splinters we will encounter as we embrace Your will for us each day.Give us the grace to fully and freely embrace the cross of our own immolation and carry it to the end, knowing that You have gone before us and carry it with us. 

May Your embrace of the cross inspire us to do the will of the Father as He wants it done, so that we are doing God’s work, not works for God.

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns and placed it on his head, and clothed him in a purple cloak, and they came to him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck him repeatedly.
John 19: 1-3

We pray:
Lord Jesus, this kind of cruelty is hard for us to imagine, and yet many people in the world are suffering horribly and being tortured at the hands of others even today. Man’s inhumanity to man is ever-present in this world. Your flesh, the flesh assumed by Divinity, is torn violently and Your blood flows to the ground. To mock You, the soldiers force a ridiculous crown onto Your head, blinding You with pain. Yet Your Heart saw clearly and continued to reach beyond the taunts and jeers, longing to gather all to the safety of love.

You endure this cruelty to show us the profoundest truth: that God is not a God of power and wrath to be feared, but that God is Love, and Love will give all and suffer all things,even to death, so that we can be free to love in return.  

All:

Lord, You are like a mother who longs to draw us all to Your Heart, but we refuse to be gathered, running with false independence toward an abyss we refuse to acknowledge. Humanity’s distorted desire for power and freedom has lead to the most hideous violence and injustice. Help us to see that only in You can we find our true selves and be free. Give us the grace to embrace whatever Your will puts before us each day, without fearing the thorns we encounter in the physical or emotional pain we endure – you have suffered before us, and walk with us, and we can unite our suffering with your own. 

May the suffering and ridicule You endured for love of us ignite deep within our hearts the desire to suffer for love of You.