Station 13: Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross

We adore you, O Christ, and we praise you. Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

Meditation

By Edward Dodge, Teacher, Catholic High School, Little Rock

En Español

This is the lamentation of Christ. The bloodied and striped body relieved of its nails, its crown and the burden of the cross, borne since the baptism. Jesus said the cross would bring all people to him, and we see this now begin as his body descends into his mother's arms. The crowd presses about her, weeping over him. So, he submits himself once more to the world: God is powerless. This is how God loves us: for us, he emptied himself, we battered him by our sin, and we abandoned him. But now our heart is pierced by a sword. We know it is our sin that did this: "Every soul is Calvary, and every sin a cross." And so he wants us to hold him close, as a constant pieta. With love, we embrace the battered body of Christ the Lord, and we show his sacrifice, his love to the world. Just as Christ gave himself to the Father, so are we to do in our daily pieta: in worship, in prayer and in service, dying to self to hold him, the poor, ill, rejected and alone.