by
Fr. John Keep

11th. Station: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

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

Then those brutal men take out a mallet and some very large and rusty nails, and Jesus is nailed to the Cross.  In this agony His thought and His prayer is:  “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  God, by His own will to save us, is fixed on points of anguish in the sight of men who hate Him for His goodness.  This is the measure of His love for you.  This is a sign of just how far He will go to help you.  At least give Him your trust.  The Cross is a measure of the awful evil of sin.  Sin is not and cannot be forgiven by an easy shrug of the shoulders by God, and an indulgent smile, and the pretense that it does not really matter.  God the Father loves His Son, and He will not have Him suffer crucifixion except to undo the harm of a most unbelievable evil.  Yet modern people say there is no such thing as sin.  Even we, who believe and have often thought about the Passion, probably often commit sins lightly and almost casually.  And we make an easy confession of them.  Yes, and we are forgiven.  After Our Lord has been through all this, and knowing that we have sinned while we actually knew about the crucifixion, yet He still forgives us almost at our first glance towards Him, even after we have let Him down so often before and been forgiven.

(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.