by
Fr. John Keep

10th. Station: Jesus is Stripped of His Clothes

Verse:  We adore You, O Christ, and we praise You.
Response:  Because by Your Holy Cross You have redeemed the world.

So at last He manages to reach the place of execution, and He is stripped of His clothes.  It is extremely humiliating and painful for a decent man to be forced to stand up in public among mocking people without his clothes.  God even made a prophecy in the psalms about this humiliation.  It reads:  “I can count every one of my bones, and they glare at me, gloating; they divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothes.”  The brutality with which He is stripped atones for our softness with ourselves, and as that sacred Form is mocked by vulgar and impure men, He is atoning for those who defile the temple of the Holy Spirit, their own God-given body and soul.  As we think of this great indignity borne by Our Lord, let us be stripped of all softness with ourselves and of our attachment to merely passing things.  In many part of the world, Jesus is still suffering these things today.

(after a brief pause)

Eternal Father, I offer You the Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Your dearly beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, in atonement for our sins and those of the whole world.

For the sake of His sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.