Let us consider our Savior accepting His condemnation, although He is Innocence and Holiness itself. We are the truly guilty ones, but we always want to excuse

and clear ourselves, finding reasons to lessen the gravity of our failings. 

We are very mistaken about ourselves. We do not like looking ourselves squarely in the face to discover the reality of our wretchedness. We try to clear ourselves by blaming our faults on the inadequacies of our education, our situation, or the tendencies of our temperament. Rarely do we own up to our guilt. We should beat our breast and ask Jesus to dispel our illusions. We should accuse ourselves humbly.

Jesus, Innocence itself, accepts to take our place and bear our great guilt. He takes all our sins upon Himself and becomes the worst of sinners because we do not want to bear our own sins. Thus burdened with all the sins of mankind, Jesus

draws down His Divine Father’s wrath upon Himself. 

As we contemplate Jesus condemned to death, let us ask for the grace of recognizing our wrongs and humble ourselves instead of trying to make excuses for ourselves. Recognizing that we are poor sinners is the first condition

for benefiting from the fruits of the redemption acquired by our Savior’s sorrowful Passion.

Let us stop justifying and excusing ourselves, stop casting the blame on others. 

Jesus accepts the cross. He accepts to suffer for us, who reject the cross. We refuse to suffer. We declare suffering unjust, whereas it is pure justice. We would

all be lost if Jesus, our Savior, had refused to suffer for us. We would all be condemned if it were not for the infinite merits acquired by the Holy Passion of our Lord and for His infinite mercy. 

Let us thank Jesus and especially recall the great feats of love He performed during His Passion. Let us thank Him for saving us almost despite ourselves. Indeed, God sends us sufferings and trials of all kinds in order to save us despite ourselves as it were. Men would be lost and would fall into hell if God let them lead an easy life, for the road to heaven is narrow. Since God does not want the fruits of His redemption to be useless, in His goodness and mercy He sends us, poor humans, sufferings of all sorts. 

Let us ask for the grace to profit from these sufferings by accepting them with a lot of love. Let us kiss the cross that God presents to us. Yes, my brothers and sisters, let us be thankful for the favor of the cross, which is suffering in all its forms. The cross is the greatest gift that God can grant us on earth. It is the gift He offers to His dearest friends. It is a sign of the predestined, the unmistakable sign of divine mercy and predestination. Let us thank God wholeheartedly for it and ask Him for the grace to love the cross. 

So bloody had Jesus’ scourging been that without a miracle, He would have been unable to carry the cross and go up to Calvary. The prophets had foretold that the Savior would hang from the wood. Such was God’s plan. His beloved Son was to die crucified. 

Let us ask God for the grace of walking right to the end of our road also, of fulfilling our earthly pilgrimage as God has outlined it for us. Let us ask for the

grace of holding fast to the finish of persevering no matter what, despite the trials and sorrows of life in order to obtain the reward promised to souls that persevere to the end. Let us ask for His perseverance through the merits of the holy passion of Jesus. 

Every day and every moment, if possible, let us contemplate our Savior going before us on the way to Calvary. The road will seem less arduous to us if we keep our eyes on Him. The way to Calvary was like the grand finale of our Savior’s life, the summing up of His earthly existence, which was a perpetual way of the cross. 

The tragic events commemorated each year during Holy Week merely reflected the outward final passion of our Lord, but He suffered His real passion throughout His life with the Most Blessed Virgin associated to it as well. 

Christ’s Passion began at His birth. Through His foreknowledge, He was aware of all His sorrows to come. Above all, He suffered at the sight of so many souls that were to rebel against grace and trample His gifts underfoot, of so many souls that were to despise His holy Passion and God’s loving advances toward mankind. The vision of this fact constituted the real Passion of Our Lord and of His Most Holy Mother, the Mother of Sorrows. 

When Mary had presented Her Jesus in the temple, the old man Simeon had

told Her, “Behold, this child is destined for the fall and for the rise of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be contradicted. And Thy own soul a sword shall pierce.”

So then, let us ask for the grace of walking courageously in Jesus’ and Mary’s footsteps, taking up our cross every day as our Lord asks us to in the Gospel: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.” Let us ask for this grace through the merits of the Holy Passion of Our Savior. 

Our Lord and the Most Blessed Virgin Mary always remained deeply united. These Two were but One. Our good Mother had been intimately bound to Her divine Son throughout the Passion. She had followed Him on the way to Calvary and shared in His sufferings to the highest possible degree. It is not without reason that we call Her the Mother of Sorrows, Our Lady of the Seven Sorrows. 

Let us ask the Most Blessed Virgin Mary to intercede for us with Her divine Son so that our souls redeemed at such a price may be purified by divine mercy. Let us ask that many souls in the world experience the fruits and benefits of our Lord’s Passion. May this Holy Passion pour extraordinary graces upon our spiritual family, upon all of Christianity, and upon the many souls walking on the path of

perdition. 

O Most Holy Mother, You have suffered so much with Your divine Son. Intercede for us with our Savior, intercede for us with the Eternal Father so that extraordinary graces may be granted to us through the merits of the Holy Passion, graces of conversion for us, graces for the Holy Church and all mankind, especially all who suffer on earth, so that all these sufferings may not be in vain, but that through a miracle of God they may be identified with those of Jesus. 

Lord Jesus, may Thy Precious Blood purify souls for whom Thou hast died with so much love. 

My Jesus, pardon and mercy, through the merits of Thy holy wounds and the sufferings of Thy Holy Mother. 

Eternal Father, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer Thee the Wounds of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to heal those of our souls.

Jesus comes to us daily on the way to Calvary in the person of our neighbor who is

suffering and sorely tried. Let us ask for the grace of imitating Simon’s action by helping Him carry His cross. Jesus told us, “As long as you did it for one of these, the least of My brethren, you did it for Me.” 

We lack faith. Poor sinners that we are, poor souls in darkness, we are unable to recognize Jesus as He crosses our path daily and several times a day, just as He once crossed the path of Simon of Cyrene.

Let us ask God for the ability to recognize Jesus, continuing His Passion in His suffering members. Sometimes we are tempted to envy the spectators of Jesus’ temporal Passion, the Passion scene that unfolded in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. But the very same Passion is being perpetuated constantly among us in favor of mankind. It is mystically renewed every moment of the day and night on our altars, as well as in the lives of the suffering members of Christ’s mystical body. 

Let us ask for the spirit of faith in order to know how to relieve Jesus in our neighbor with a kind word or a helping hand. 

Seeing her Savior so disfigured, this courageous woman knows no fear. She breaks through the crowd to go and wipe the bloody face of Jesus. Oh, how fortunate she is, but we forget that this woman’s joy is ours too. We can wipe the battered face of Jesus in our neighbor every day. We can also publicly proclaim our attachment to

Jesus every day by being faithful to His commandments, His Gospel, and His every wish.

Veronica proved her love for Jesus in a striking manner, but we too can prove our love a hundred times a day if we want to. Perhaps our gestures will not be so spectacular or performed in such outstanding circumstances, but these proofs of our love will be just as real. 

We like the spectacular and the unusual, but we lack love. Why did Veronica perform such a courageous act while the Apostles fled? Because she loved and love gives wings. 

Let us ask for the great grace of the love of God. May Jesus, by His Holy Passion, kindle our hearts with His love, that love which will make everything easy for us while making us ready to do everything for our God.

We become indignant when we see Jesus brutalized, mistreated, and insulted on the way to Calvary. We forget that we are the ones, present in the executioners, who by our sins have given Satan the power to brutalize Jesus. We are the ones who are primarily guilty for Christ’s Passion, but we would like to play innocent.

Do we forget that we are often ready to torture Jesus for a trifle? We cast Him aside for a vile pleasure, a petty satisfaction. We prefer petty trifles of the earth over Jesus our Savior and our God. We are ready to violate the Commandments and holy desires of God for our own contentment. We trample God’s gifts underfoot and give up His grace for so little. We place God on a par with vulgar, worthless, sometimes even shameful things. And then we would like to have a clear conscience and pass off as innocent. 

Pardon, O Lord, pardon. We ask you for the grace to understand the malice of our faults, the gravity of all our disobediences against Your commandments and holy will. O Jesus, make us understand the malice of our acts, and grant us the grace of conversion. 

O my Jesus, pardon and mercy, through the merits of Thy Holy Wounds and the sufferings of Thy Mother.

“Do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children”, said Jesus to the woman of Jerusalem. The real subject for sorrow is sin, not the Passion itself. 

Sin causes every misfortune on earth. Like hypocrites, we deplore the woes beating down on the world as though they come from others, but we are all guilty. We poor humans must admit our guilt and beat our breast with humility. Yes, our Saviour suffered for our own sins and for those of the whole world. 

Our first parents disobeyed God. They rejected His will and listened to the devil telling them, God wants to keep you in ignorance, beneath His yoke. Pay no  attention to Him, emancipate yourself, liberate yourself. “You will be like God knowing good and evil.” Our mother Eve listened to these words. She and Adam let themselves get caught. And history repeats itself... 

Man’s pride makes him want to surpass God Himself, and that is the source of all misfortune. Why are there so many sufferings on earth? Why so many wars, so much poverty, so many people dying from starvation? All these misfortunes occur because man turns away from God. He does not follow the path drawn up by God. He listens to the voice of Satan, who is jealous of the happiness God has destined for man in eternity. 

God has shown the path we must follow if we want to be happy with Him. The servants of God enjoy happiness and peace even in this life, despite their sufferings. 

Saddest of all, man generally does not want to walk according to the path indicated by God in His commandments and in His Gospel. Men stray from this path which leads directly to Heaven, and every misfortune follows: war, injustice, sufferings of all kinds. When man really takes the path that leads to God, he becomes a servant of God, thus improving the condition of all mankind. But there are not enough of these servants… We need thousands of Saints Francis of Assisi, thousands of Saints Curé of Ars, thousands of Saints Theresa of the Child Jesus, who, like so many other Saints, spent their life on earth doing good. These are the kind of people who really improve the condition of mankind.

Nothing on earth will change as long as we do not want to understand this truth and return to God by walking closely united to Jesus and Mary. We can deplore the world’s situation as much as we want, but all our lamentations will remain sterile without the concrete amendment of our own life.

Jesus, Almighty God, put on our humanity and took our weaknesses upon Himself in order to make us strong. “Without Me, you can do nothing”, He says. But Saint Paul also wrote, “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me.”

O Jesus, give us the strength and the courage to carry our cross to the end, to observe Your commandments and obey You in all things, in order to become saviours with You and Your Most Holy Mother, the Co-redemptrix of the human race. 

O Jesus, give us the grace to be hosts, immolated and crucified with You. Give us Your strength, Jesus, we humbly pray. We humbly recognize that without You, we are only poor, weak, fragile and inconstant humans. May our souls be fortified by the merits of Your Holy Passion, so that we may become Your servants and walk in the footsteps of all the Saints who served You with so much love. Make us become truly Your Apostles of the Latter Times to inflame Christianity, inflame the hearts of our brothers and sisters, so that mankind may enjoy better times. 

We implore You by the merits of Your Holy Passion, grant us this grace, O my God. “Greater love than this no one has, that he lay down his life for his friends.” You have given us this proof of love. You had already spent Your life drop by drop. But in this unforgettable spectacle, You desired to give us tangible, irrefutable proof of the infinite love You had for such unworthy creatures. We thank You for this, and we want to love You in return, assisted by Your holy grace and strength. Take possession of our person and live in us. May it no longer be us who live, but may we be able to say with Saint Paul, “Christ lives in me.” Come within us, Jesus. Take possession of our person. Live within us. We want to give ourselves to You. Take us. 

Jesus is dignity and purity itself, but He allows Himself to be stripped in front of the crowd. He accepted to undergo this affront in order to atone for man’s indecencies, impurities and scandals. 

God had created man, luminous, resplendent with His glory. Like the Most Blessed Virgin, whom Holy Scripture calls “the woman clothed with the sun”, man also wore this divine splendor as his garment, but he lost it through sin. As Genesis records: After sinning, our first parents “realized that they were naked”, and they were ashamed. “They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings” to hide their nakedness. It is no glory to be naked. It is a dishonor. In nature, we see birds ornate with beautiful feathers and animals covered with lovely fur, but man has been left in his nakedness because of sin. 

Since Jesus had become the sinner beyond compare, the man of sin, having taken the sins of all mankind upon Himself, He had to undergo the sinner’s lot and punishment and be stripped naked. 

Let us ask God pardon for all our acts indecency, our lack of shame and all our acts of immodesty. Let us ask pardon for ourselves and for all men, because we are responsible for them. 

We cannot say as Cain did, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Yes, we are our brother’s keeper. We are responsible, and mankind would improve if we were more generous in giving ourselves to God. We call ourselves Christians, apostles and disciples of Christ. We claim to be, but our ideas often wander very far from Christ’s. Let us not play innocent! We bear our share of guilt in all the misfortunes occurring

on earth. 

So often we are tempted to look down on our neighbor and criticize him, whereas our poor neighbor needs our prayers and penances. Souls need our prayers. They need the merits of Jesus Christ that we could obtain for them by the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. 

Let us ask God to touch our heart and open our eyes to our wretchedness. May He give us the grace of conversion in order to become true Christians, true disciples of Christ.

Let us ask Jesus for the grace of being nailed to the cross with Him and uniting ourselves intimately to Him, so that we may be one with Him in our thoughts and desires, will and feelings. Let nothing foreign to Our Lord subsist within us, but may everything within us confirm to His thoughts, desires, feelings and Will.

Let us love what Jesus loves, and be truly crucified with Him: “victims of Jesus and Jesus Crucified”, as the Most Blessed Virgin requests in the Rule of the Order of the Mother of God. 

Let us ask Our Lord daily for the grace of an intimate union with Him. May His Holy Wounds be ever present in our mind, and may we never forget the marks of infinite love that Our Savior has given us.

Let us contemplate our divine Savior lifted up between heaven and earth. His

Most Holy Mother is there to receive His last words. 

“Woman, behold Your son. Son, behold your Mother.” Jesus has given us everything, and at this supreme moment He gives us what is most precious to Him on earth. He gives us His Mother. He gives Her to us for all time and eternity. In the person of Saint John, we all received this precious gift. We have become children of Mary. We can never show God enough gratitude for this. 

Let us ask the Mother of Sorrows to imprint the wounds of Jesus Crucified deep within our hearts. Let us ask Her to teach us the things of Heaven. We are so

limited... All the mysteries of our religion lie far beyond our grasp, especially the great mystery of our Redemption. A God becoming man and dying for His creatures! Who can understand this mystery of love? It remains something we cannot conceive in our little human minds, but it is a reality. A mystery is something that surpasses human intelligence, but is nonetheless a reality. Our Savior died for us and we should reflect on this as often as possible. 

Let us contemplate Jesus disfigured, His head crowned with thorns, His body all tattered and torn. His many wounds reveal God’s love for us. Who among us would be ready to suffer torments in place of his neighbor? That would constitute a great proof of love, which no one could ever doubt. 

If one of us were condemned to suffer all the torments Jesus underwent, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the crucifixion, and someone came up and said,

“No, no, my friend, leave it to me. I’ll take your place. I’ll suffer those things in your place.” Would you be able to doubt that person’s love for you, even for a moment? Yet that is what Jesus did for us... 

Let us make a serious examination of conscience, asking ourselves whether we are truly walking in the footsteps of our suffering Jesus. We spend all our time whining and complaining instead, thinking about how unjustly people treat us. As we face Jesus in His sufferings, let us once and for all realize and accept the fact that we deserve to suffer in atonement for our sins. It is the least we can do in this world if we want to share in Jesus’ kingdom.

Jesus is placed in the sepulchre in order to show us how we should be stripped of the old man and buried with Jesus, if we want to resurrect with our Divine Master to a new life, a life made up of love and generosity. By the merits of His holy Passion, may Jesus perform this great miracle in our favor. 

The Passion and death of this God made man is the most extraordinary event in the history of mankind. It can never be erased. People talk about all kinds of events, but the event of Christ dying for mankind is the greatest one of all. All other events pale beside that one. 

O Jesus, at the end of this Way of the Cross, by the infinite merits You acquired for us, obtain for us the grace of a new life, a miraculous transformation, a sincere conversion. Amen.