A Walking Meditation for Lent

I
Jesus is Condemned to Death

P:

Standing condemned Christ moves to take our sin;
a grave for the wicked is set aside for him.
Dreams of a wife show subconscious strife.
In his chambers dark, PilotÕs will takes life.
Seeing Our Light he remarks, ÒWhat is Truth?Ó
To him it is nothing: ÒI release him to you.Ó
And from fear of being judged
Peter soothes ears denying his beloved.

R:

Judgment, on all of our backs it lies.
Can bad men be used for goodÕs supply?
When I am judged and it changes my way,
though wrong and apt to disarray dismay,
the future, the cross, it darkens my sight.
GodÕs ways are not ours and lead us to light.
Lord your power is beyond our cognition.
Through deeds of evil, good comes to fruition.

II
Jesus Bears His Cross

P:

A whip-cut back accepts the weight
as wood is stacked and skin gives way.
Cut straight the whip marks tear too wide.
Not sighed, but cried the one denied
a just trial starts his road.
Rough the rocks on the way are strode
and loathed that first step to the top
of the skull place where flesh is lifted aloft.

R:

Lord, to start on the rocky way
dismayed at what harms may lay
on the rough road to choose your will
and be graced the life that it fulfills.
Help us to take that feared first step
and take the shifts, the flows, the ebbs,
some joys, some pains along our road
to change us to you, and make us whole.

III
Jesus Falls the First Time

P:

To fall to knee to fall indeed
callused knees ruptured by gravity.
Left hand down and push the weight.
Left foot lifts a staggered gait.
The whip and club are quick to sting
and clings now blood to a garment unseamed.
Rise and walk with wood on back
till the next fall from the strength that lacks.

R:

Lord, we fail, on the path to you.
We do those things we would eschew.
The temptation is great to take a rest,
to test the soil. Now feel it lest
to lie in our spiritual state
would seem a comfort and the path abate.
Our journey halted premature,
for dying to ourselves we could not endure.

IV
Jesus Meets His Mother

P:

Water breaks both from womb, from side
and cries a mother her son denied.
Memory: a childÕs first high-pitched word,
a mother living for word to dirge.
A hand once small and uncalloused once wrapped
in her hand, soon to be pierced and wracked
in pain, a mother to watch her son slain
questioning GodÕs aim. Is it all in vain?

R:

Lord suffering of family or friends we decry.
We despise selfishly wanting them not to die.
To die to themselves to the world to leave us.
The sufferings they take up on the way are grievous.
Lord help us to see suffering as a path
for ourselves and for others help us not to grasp.
Break up dependencies on all but your breath,
which gives us our being, gives us life after death.

V
Jesus is Helped by Simon

P:

The pressure makes sore the bones beneath.
Atonement soon bequeathed, but now please relief.
The weight shifts; the weight lifts fresh air on a bruised back.
ÒWhat has passed?Ó Dazed thoughts Òperhaps pardon at last.Ó
Soil-stained nails on a hand that lifts
and gifts reprieve from the pain that rips.
Omit not the fleeting aid
the field hand gave on the road sharp paved.

R:

Lord, presence divine, sustaining all we know
and more, things sublime we canÕt even be shown,
in the flow of time our works seem so small.
Hearing calls, we set out to give our all.
But with purpose we do nothing to bring your will,
which, in ways unknown, we aid to fulfill.
Through spiritual and corporal works of our hands
solid like SimonÕs bringing your divine plans.

VI
Jesus and Veronica

P:

Eyes blind by blood, the flies they stick,
On The Son of ManÕs face, other menÕs spit,
dust sits, dirt, grit, and a stumbling lurch
a humbling urge to stop. The blinding surge,
crowds press, blood hungry for capital death
hold breath as Veronica breaks the jest.
She steps with her futile cleansing wipe
giving dignified sight to our Pascal Light.

R:

Lord, help us to chance being mocked
when giving sight to those whom obstacles block.
With your strength the poor and oppressed
weÕll give dignity, treat not as less,
and help us to see as blessed the world we aid
as we wipe away illness, pain, and low wage.
Let us not degrade those seen as condemned
but clean away sin, and a broken world mend.

VII
Jesus Falls a Second Time

P:

Further this time the stumbled fall
recalling the pain and exhaling. All
blood mixed sweat takes a jolt down,
from crown to brow to chin to ground
Knees, elbows crawl to gather weight
resounding the flesh from its sedate state.
Pulling all the strength mustered within
hands push earth; he will rise again.

R:

Lord: help us to rise when repeated we fall.
We call this prayer, ÒHelp us rise after all.Ó
After all our weaknesses, failings and tests.
After pall raise us to life from death.
That one weak push we give to dirt
you aid and raise up from earth.
The girth, a lighter weight to bear,
because you aid us in our despair.

VIII
Jesus Speaks to the Women

P:

Here at the crossroads the outcasts meet.
After the greeting the women weep.
A well-trained tongue to speak to the weary
foretelling facts of what they are fearing.
Fall on us mountains cover us hills.
Blessed is the woman whose womb is unfilled.
The green wood is taken to the hills to die.
In these times what will become of the dry?

R:

Lord your consolation rubs raw.
In awe we hear of a world enthralled
In hate, in war, anguish and pain
You proclaim, itÕs perhaps best not to remain.
But still on your way you toil over rock
up hill till you hear that hammering shock.
Then silence and into nothingness you seep
till the power on high raises you to the deep.

IX
Jesus Falls the Third Time

P:

Bones grown soft have all been counted.
They fail as chest smacks earth cross mounted.
Surmounted, the hill, and now at the top
the last strength drops to spits and scoffs.
In him there was no stately bearing,
accustom to infirmity kicks and swearing.
With his last fall he reached the skull place.
A wracked-pain rest now until the grave.

R:

Lord this last fall we fear most,
to give all to your hand with nothing to boast.
Journeyed far as we can, you take the till
and make us your own despite malice or ill will.
They will take us and proceed to do horrible things.
No one intercedes as around us they ring.
Despite what happens from here to the end,
we trust your promise and know weÕll ascend.

X
Jesus is Stripped of His Garments

P:

To be stripped down for all to see
the natural state, as if infirmity.
Cast lots, the seamless garment torn off
ripping wounds dried to its coarse cloth.
Course cough of the guards as they lead exposed
the redeemer of man to his repose.
From rough whips and clubs now there is no protection,
nor from the nails now sounding inflection.

R:

Lord, humble we walk backward to you
like Jacob and Shem covering body nude.
Noah shamed speaks for the first time
Showing in your shame the best wisdom is mined.
Love divine that will come to us even rejected
and pulled down to pain, shame, torment subjected.
In time we will walk stripped of desire
in the kingdom, like gold that is tested in fire.

XI
Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

P:

Nailed to a tree wrists bleed impaled
as breath/spirit leaves it wails more than exhales.
Frail, the body hangs rib clenched.
Lungs wrench as blood, tears, and sweat drench.
Look upon the one who is pierced by sin;
wafer thin his body and bruised his skin.
He, lifted up like the bronze serpent, and we
look up, seeking from our bonds to be free.

R:

Lord, laws cannot all be correct
though kings be just and good men we elect.
Reflect on how power pushed to put low
our savior and did so blow by blow
till loÕ hands holed he hung from wood;
doing what he could he seemed come to no good.
Through the criminal condemned to capital castigation
you showed brighter light than galaxies in rotation.

XII
Jesus Dies on the Cross

P:

That one last lift on nails in wrists
and now sink slow into nothingness;
mind drifts to haze; face muscles relax;
a spear is thrust into the thorax.
Water and blood, life pours out the impailed.
Earth quakes, eclipses and a torn temple veil.
The crucified Christ has cried and died
atonement achieved, salvation supplied.

R:

Lord by cruel means or a poise of distinction
we all face this moment of our own extinction.
Like landowners storing up grains in large barns
charmed we think we are till disarmed
by the truth. How foolishly we forget
we too are destined for nothingness.
No test can we pass save rely on the aid
of this sinless lamb, and our sins he forgave.

XIII
Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross

P:

After death it is up to the ones who are left
to cope with the stress post the painful reached rest.
Rise and wrench cold nails from wrist.
Cries of mourning yield industriousness.
Ladder lifted, lift the light body in arms.
A body in a seeming sleep far from harms,
disarms those wrapping it feeling the loss
in their chest, not left since the spearÕs coupe de grace.

R:

Lord how are we to go on
and walk this way with loved ones gone?
Joseph took, with stoic resolve,
this death and the body he took down and palled.
Give to us, when we are faced with such tasks,
the courage to continue to walk the path.
And let the wellspring of this courage be
Christian hope, that we, in Christ, are death free.

XIV
Jesus is Laid in the Sepulchre

P:

A linen cloth wrapped round over the corpse
laid in a tomb with sorrowed remorse.
Empty as it is, and hewed from the rock,
a bolder rolled over the cave to block.
Jonah laid three days at SheolÕs bars
and now Jesus, hands and feet scarred,
to the deep he travels to grant the reprieve
giving peace to our parents, Adam and Eve.

R:

Lord when the time comes we will all lay long,
for more than four days we will rest weak and strong.
Till the song of GodÕs word reaches our ears
relieves fears and makes all death disappear.
Lying as he was on this slab of rock
much came to pass ere the third dayÕs crowing cock.
In his death he broke the netherworldÕs gates,
conquered Fates made Principalities and Powers abate.

Phillip G.

Literature