Sacred Heart interlude: Twelfth Station - Jesus dies on the Cross (Balthasar)

[As an echo of Good Friday during Ordinary Time, the Church celebrates a Solemnity in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on the Friday after Corpus Christi Sunday.  Here the mystery of God's love revealed in the Cross of Christ is drawn out of the penance and sadness of Lent, and placed before us in our every day lives which is constantly illuminated by the completion of the historical and liturgical observances of the  Resurrection, Ascension, and Descent of the Holy Spirit... taking us into our own age so in need of an awareness of the depths of God's love.  So on this day, in union with the spirit of the series I did during Lent, I offer one more tableau of the Twelfth Station, that given by Hans Urs von Balthasar and used for the pope's stations at the Colosseum in 1988, shortly before Balthasar died.  I looked all over the internet for this text to include it in the Lent series I did, but I couldn't find it in English... it must be out of print.  In recent weeks, I finally got hold of the text, which I share below for your prayer and meditation.]

 

Twelfth Station:  Jesus dies on the cross.

V/.  We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.

R/.  Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.

"And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour.  And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachtani?' which means, "My God, my God, why hadst thou forsaken me?'  ... And one ran, filling a sponge full of vinegar, put it on a reed, and gave it to him to drink... And Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last.  ...And when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that he thus breathed his last, he said, 'Truly this man was the Son of God'."  (Mark 15: 33-39 RSV)

   Jesus is suspended between heaven and earth, repudiated by men and forsaken by his Father, thus restoring the unity between them.  Extending his arms he reaches out to both the sinner who goes back to him and to the one who turns away from him and yet could not hinder Christ to reach out to him.  The vertical beam of the cross bridges the gap between God and man, while the horizontal one embraces the ends of the earth.  The Fathers of the Church therefore could aptly say that the Cross had the dimensions of the whole creation; it has the dimensions of the whole history of the human race because in those three long hours of Christ's agony, the sins of all -- from the first person to the very last -- have been gathered and remitted.  From now on the way to heaven is open to all: this is the teaching of the Church.

   The last words of the dying Jesus express his entire testament to the Church: that the Father will surely, indeed he must, forgive us, wretched and ignorant as we are; that Easter will be the great absolution, setting the seal on our final reconciliation with God; and that the sinless Mother is placed at the center of the Church which, despite the sinfulness of its members, preserves it core intact.

   Jesus' forsaken death on the cross opened for us the way to the Father.  The thirst of Christ's body, drained of every drop of blood, makes of it a spring from whence flow waters of eternal life.  Both the water of baptism and the blood of the Eucharist quench our thirst.  In the dying cry of Jesus, God reveals to us his infinite love which transcends the power of words.

   Bending his head, Jesus gives up the Spirit, the same Spirit whom he will breathe on the Church on the day of his Resurrection, and in this way all is truly accomplished.

 

Holy Mary, Virgin of the cross:

by the tree of life, you are humanity itself:

obedient and faithful, receptive to the word,

resolute and dutiful, open to the Spirit.

 

Reveal to us the mystery of the "Hour" of your Son:

of his glory in disgrace,

of his majesty in service,

of our life in his death.

 

But it is also you "Hour", O Virgin Mary:

the hour of birth -- in faith, in pain, in the Spirit;

for that new birth, Jesus, dying on the cross,

said: "Woman, behold your son."