by
Fr. John Keep

2nd. Station:  Jesus Takes Up His Cross

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

The just wages of sin are death, because sin destroys whatever it touches.  The human race has sinned.  There is a sentence of destruction, of death, and someone has to take the Cross.  Our Lord had looked down from heaven and had seen this truth, and He saw that no one had the strength to bear the weight of this Cross.  He decided to come down from heaven, to become Man so thoroughly that He would embrace the human race and bear its sentence with all the rigor of the just punishment for all the sins of all men from Adam to the end of time.  Think of the burden of guilt that Jesus pays for, pays for as if it were His own debt.
         
Now the hour has come, the hour of darkness, the hour for which Our Lord has been waiting, the hour for which He came.  And so He takes up the Cross as if it were His own.  He takes it up willingly.  He is already very weak from the Agony in the Garden, from scourging and crowning with thorns, and He has been spat upon.  But He takes up the Cross as if it belongs to Him, for it belongs to mankind, and He has embraced mankind.  He Who is chooses to lay down His life for me and for you, and He would do so if no one else existed.  That is what He thinks of you.

(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.